Tegla Loroupe

Tegla Loroupe was born in a village near Kapenguria in West Pokot, a remote and often violent corner of north-west Kenya. Her father had several wives and more than 20 children, and expected the girls to work and to marry. She ran ten kilometres to school each way, barefoot, and won races there, but her father refused to let her train. It was her mother and a supportive teacher who kept her going, and eventually a job in the prisons service gave her a way to run without asking permission.

Small and light even by the standards of Kenyan runners, she was overlooked by the men who ran the sport at home. In 1994 she went to the New York City Marathon and won it, the first African woman to win a major marathon. She won it again the following year, a few weeks after her sister had died. She set world records in Rotterdam in 1998 and Berlin in 1999 and was world half marathon champion three years running.

In 2003 she set up the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation, which stages races that bring together young men from Pokot, Turkana, Karamojong and other communities that had been raiding each other's cattle and killing each other for generations. Warriors were persuaded to hand in guns and run instead.

In 2016 she was chosen to lead the first Refugee Olympic Team at the Rio Games.