It’s a cool weekday afternoon at the Sydney Olympic Park Athletics Centre, with the usual assortment of runners ranging from schoolkids to professionals going through their paces.
But at one end of the track, there’s a group of world-class sprinters who run with a deeper purpose than most.
It includes Ismail Dudu Kamara — a Sierra Leonean refugee who’s running from fear of political persecution.
There’s Abdoulie Asim — an easy-going refugee from Gambia who’s been cast out by his family because of his religion.
The softly spoken, heartbroken Isoken Igbinosun from Nigeria, who is struggling to survive.
And the Australian women’s 400 metres champion, Bendere Oboya, who nearly quit the sport due to mental health issues and a bitter split from her former coach.
And at the centre is John Quinn, a man who’s part-coach, counsellor, friend and father figure.
It’s a unique training group that has become a de facto family as they lean on each other to rebuild their careers and their lives.
‘I’ll be sent to prison’ — the fear driving Ismail
When Ismail Dudu Kamara runs, it’s a magnificent sight.
He’s excitingly fast and free, gliding down the track with ease.
But his power, pace and strength disguise his heavy mind, constantly weighed down by fear and the guilt he feels for those he’s left behind in his native Sierra Leone.
The 23-year-old 100m and 200m runner is from the Northern Province of the West African nation.
He was one of only four athletes to represent his country at the 2016 Rio Olympics and he also competed at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.
As one of Sierra Leone’s most prominent athletes, he used his voice to campaign for his preferred presidential candidate in the 2018 election.
But when his party lost, Kamara knew it wasn’t safe to return home.
“Because for the past [two] years now after the election, a lot of people, some of them are friends, some of them close relatives, [have been] reportedly killed.”
Kamara successfully sought asylum in Australia after the 2018 Games but that hasn’t eased his mental burden.
Since the election result, his brother has struggled to get a job and he worries he’s put his friends and family in danger.
“Sometimes I sit back and think they’re going through a lot because of me, what I’ve put them into,” Kamara says.
“So I just think sometimes it’s my fault. My friends always tell me, ‘it’s not your fault, don’t worry about that, just try and move on, just pray for them’.”
The coach bringing ‘light to their lives’
Kamara says finding this training group, which includes athletes from Europe, Asia, Africa, the South Pacific, and Australia, has helped him move forward.
In particular, he credits the influence of experienced coach Quinn.
“Having an amazing coach like John, he’s been encouraging me while mentally I was struggling,” Kamara says.
“And the others, they’ve been encouraging me and talking to me.
“It’s a good feeling having different backgrounds here. And John is one of those coaches [who puts] everyone together.”
Quinn was the sprint and relay coach for the Australian track and field team at the Sydney 2000 Olympics and says Kamara is “an enormous talent” who seems to have received “a whole new lease of life” in Australia.
Quinn, who has extensive experience in high performance across a range of sports, says he is enjoying the opportunity to guide an eclectic group of athletes.
“I believe in coaching people more so than coaching athletes, and there’s a lot of work because they all need particular things,” he says.
“You’ve got to be sensitive to so many different cultures and beliefs and traditions and religion, and then out of that bring the best performance out of the person.
“So it’s been a real challenge, but it’s one that I’ve loved and enjoy coming to the track every day.
“And it’s fantastic seeing them achieve their potential and bring the colour of light to their lives that they actually need to move forward.”
Rebuilding after living under a bridge
Abdoulie Asim is another athlete who has benefited from Quinn’s mentorship on and off the track.
The 28-year-old from Gambia considers himself incredibly lucky to even be living in Australia.
The Gambian Government withdrew from the Commonwealth in 2013, but the country was readmitted as a member of the Commonwealth Games Federation just days before competition began on the Gold Coast in 2018.
That gave Asim a last-minute ticket to Australia — one the converted Christian embraced, particularly as he feared religious persecution at the hands of his family, who are Muslim leaders in his community.
After being granted asylum after the Games, he lived under a bridge in Parramatta for a few weeks before finding refuge in a local hostel for men who are in crisis or experiencing homelessness.
He’s pragmatic when talking about his journey so far.
“What you’re going to do to survive, just do it,” he says, adding that he had more piece of mind sleeping rough in Sydney than he ever did back home.
Once Asim started to settle in, he looked for a coach to take him on.
That’s when he discovered Quinn and they instantly connected, with Asim saying his coach has become “like a father to me”.
The 100m and 200m runner, nicknamed “Busta”, admits he was suffering constant nightmares, thinking about what might happen to him.
“Those worries [have gone] since I met these people … I feel like I’m home,” he says.
Australia’s next golden girl ‘wanted to quit athletics’
Bendere Oboya can relate to that feeling.
The 20-year-old is the Australian 400m champion and the only sprinter to have run a qualifying time for the delayed Tokyo Olympics.
Her family came to Australia from Ethiopia when she was just three years old and she enjoyed her childhood growing up in Pendle Hill, in Sydney’s west.
Her talent shone through at school and she made a quick rise up the ranks.
By the time she was 19, she was Commonwealth Games Youth Champion and a semi-finalist at the world championships, but she very nearly walked away from it all after a tumultuous 2019.
“I was quite a mess. My mental health was crazy. I wanted to quit athletics,” she says.
“I wasn’t in the right environment, around really negative vibes, I knew I had to do something about that.”
Oboya says there was a significant breakdown in the relationship with her former coach, which deeply affected her.
She didn’t recognise herself, becoming cold and disconnected from others as it infiltrated every aspect of her life.
“I knew I had to leave when I started vomiting in Starbucks because I was so overwhelmed with everything going on,” she says.
“I felt like where I did train, it no longer became my home, I hated it, I hated going.”
She was introduced to Quinn by a friend and that was a game changer.
“I remember him saying that you have to take care of the person you were before an athlete, and that was like ‘OK, I think this is the right pick for me’,” she says.
“Because I feel like you could be a good coach, you could know all the sessions, know how to get speed into you, all this, but [you need to help an] athlete mentally.
Quinn beams when he speaks about his star pupil.
“She’s a potential finalist in Tokyo, just her manner in which she goes about what she does, you’d never know it,” he says.
“She’s a pleasure to coach and the most exciting thing is there’s so much scope to improve her as an athlete, and that’s what we’re doing.”
While the comparisons with Cathy Freeman have been inevitable as Australia searches for its next 400m superstar, Quinn says like Freeman, Oboya can stand for something bigger than sport.
“She can be the uniting energy that Australia needs,” he says.
“Especially now there’s so much negativity around from COVID to the recession to whatever it might be, we need people of positivity and hope and inspiration.
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“I think this young lady, she encapsulates all of that, and she brings people together.
“And she can do that in her own person. But she’s certainly going to do it through her performances on the track.”
The modest Oboya just wants to be a positive role model for young girls.
“If I could inspire every girl to not think about how tall you are, how much muscle you need, all that, and you can run fast,” she says.
“I wish girls can look at me and be like, ‘she could do that, I could do that’. It’s really just how bad you want it.”
Hopes for a happier life in Australia
Intense desire drives Isoken Igbinosun when she’s at her lowest points.
She’s the third African refugee in Quinn’s training group and, in true Australian fashion, she’s been given the ironic nickname of “Happy”.
There’s a visible sense of pain when you look into her eyes, and her voice cracks with frustration and desperation when she talks about her past and her hopes for her future.
The 27-year-old is from Edo State in Nigeria and was also granted asylum after the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
She doesn’t want to detail why she fled, but says she struggled to make ends meet there, despite being one of the country’s top-ranked sprinters.
“I wanted to stop, [but] my coach encouraged me, [saying] don’t give up in life,” she says.
“So that’s why I tried to train hard and to be tough and to be number one.”
While Igbinosun had plenty of issues with her sport’s governing body back home, it still isn’t easy trying to make it in Australia.
She works full-time in a factory, spending all day on her feet, and then has to train afterwards.
“Now, I don’t have no support, no-one helping me. I wish it will be better,” she says.
But like her training partners, Igbinosun is determined to keep running.
“I’m pushing myself to try hard to be a citizen. I’m just begging Australia if they can help me. I promise I would do my best,” she says.
“I don’t want to give up the sport, I don’t want to end my career like this. Because this is my dream, to run and represent Australia.”
