🇺🇬 WELCOME! Heroic Ugandan Olympic team back home

TOKYO OLYMPICS

A heroic Team Uganda arrived back home Tuesday from the just-concluded Olympic Games in Japan, having collectively registered the best performance at any Olympics, with a historic total of four medals to show for and a second-top spot on the African medals ranking behind Kenya.

Part of the group included newly crowned Olympic champions Joshua Cheptegei and Peruth Chemutai, who were triumphant in the men's 5,000m and women's 3,000m steeplechase, respectively.

Cheptegei also bagged silver in the men's 10,000m final in Tokyo, a race in which compatriot Jacob Kiplimo was also a medallist - with bronze.

The team was received at Entebbe International Airport by officials led by Minister of State for Sports, Denis Hamson Obua, before making their way to Kampala in a motorcade.

The three medallists - Cheptegei, Chemutai and Kiplimo - stood through the sunroof of the vehicles in which they moved and held up Ugandan flags as they waved to the people lining the Entebbe-Kampala highway to catch a glimpse of their heroes. They wore their medals around their necks, putting on display the truly deserved fruits of their labour.

Although their reception at the airport was low-key due to restrictions on crowds in these unusual times of a pandemic that has dragged on for more than a year, pockets of people abandoned what they were doing to station themselves at vantage spots on the sidelines of the busy road to view the motorcade.

Some danced in pure elation while others cheered on the Olympic stars as their convoy slalomed from Entebbe to Uganda's capital.

Pandemic restricts crowds at airport

The Ugandan Olympians received an outpouring of plaudits at home and beyond for their historic team effort at an Olympics edition delayed for one year due to the coronavirus pandemic. And the group will surely understand that it is the same pandemic that denied them what would have been a massive welcome at the airport on their homecoming if it were ordinary times. But these are far from ordinary times.

The team's arrival on Tuesday was in marked constrast to the nostalgic scenes witnessed at Entebbe in 2012 when Stephen Kiprotich returned from the London Games with Uganda's first Olympic gold medal in 40 years.

Their relatively low-key homecoming has, however, not extinguished the ecstatic mood that has continued to lift the entire nation since Friday, July 30 when Cheptegei and Kiplimo, who is 20, opened Uganda's medals account with their historic 10,000m double podium finish.

Chemutai, 22, improved the mood even more when she became the first Ugandan female Olympic medalist, before 24-year-old Cheptegei matched that golden feat with a solid performance to conquer a star-studded 5,000m field under the floodlights of the Olympic Stadium in Japan's capital.

A fairy tale Olympic outing

2012 Olympic marathon champion Kiprotich faded in the 2020 edition, failing to finish the marathon under Sapporo's brutal elements in a race won by Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge. But the 32-year-old Ugandan will have been consoled by the achievement of his compatriots in previous events days before.

Uganda was represented by a 25-strong team in Tokyo, but after coming out with nothing in rowing, swimming and boxing, all remaining medal hopes fell on athletics.

And right on the opening day of the athletics schedule, Cheptegei and Kiplimo got the East African nation on the medals table with not one, but two medals from the men's 10,000m final.

Next up, sensational Peruth Chemutai became the third Ugandan medallist in Tokyo when she won the women's 3,000m steeplechase in scintillating fashion. The lesser-known athlete beat a field of world-class middle-distance runners featuring the event's world record holder, Kenyan Beatrice Chepkoech, to become the first Ugandan female to win an Olympic medal - and how delightful that it was the big one: gold!

Exactly one week after securing medals, Cheptegei and fellow countryman Kiplimo were back on the track, this time on a quest for men's 5,000m glory. Also in the mix was Kiplimo's brother Oscar Chelimo, aged 19.

Determined to get his hands on gold, Cheptegei was out to underline his credentials as one of the world's greatest runners. Indeed, he was not to be denied this time, managing to shake off Canada's Mohamed Ahmed and Paul Chelimo of the USA in a dramatic finish. 

After a medal-less outing in Rio five years ago, Team Uganda's triumph in Tokyo has allowed Ugandans to accommodate nascent belief that there is more to come in future Olympic editions.

They were excited to see their heroes back