Halimah Nakaayi: "Once you have a dream, fight for it"

It's the dance that everyone remembers.

Fresh from securing victory in the 2019 World Championships 800m final, Uganda's Halimah Nakaayi joined her long-time friend and compatriot Winnie Nanyondo in a victory dance for the ages.

The first two female middle-distance runners from Uganda to ever reach a world final had just finished first and fourth in the steaming heat of Doha, Qatar – and the crowd was being treated to their joyous celebrations.

Nakaayi, convinced she was destined to triumph in the race, had woken Nanyondo up the night before, excited to practice the dance they were now performing on the athletics track of the Khalifa International Stadium.

It marked a stark contrast to seven years earlier, in 2012, when the same two women had been laid out on the ground after an arduous race went seriously wrong. And most people at the time thought Nakaayi was dead.

Running to escape punishment

It is, perhaps, an odd way to discover you've got talent. More so when it's the type of talent that takes you all the way to a World Championship gold medal.

Pelting down the hallway with her mother in hot pursuit, Nakaayi came to the realisation that, not only was she escaping certain punishment, she was also fast.

Very fast.

"At home when I made a mistake she [her mother] would want to punish me. She used to tell me she was a great athlete and I wanted to prove to her that I could run faster than her," Nakaayi explained in an exclusive interview with Tokyo 2020. "So most times she would chase me and by the time I reached the age of six or seven, she could not get me."

Even her mother, who had given up on her athletics dreams after giving birth to Nakaayi at around age 16, acknowledged the fact that, "among my children you have got my talent".

But talent didn't give Nakaayi carte blanche to pursue her athletic ambitions. Far from it. In the area of Uganda where she grew up, people weren't meant to do sports.

"People from my family were negative about sport. They thought being from the central part [of Uganda] the only way I could be successful in life was through academics. But I kept believing in myself."

It is a self-belief that she has always held onto, even when nobody else believed in her.

"Maybe," Nakaayi dared to dream, "I could be a great athlete."

Finding a pathway to both her dreams

When Nakaayi was presented with a choice between following her distant athletic fantasy and travelling down her parents' favoured path to academics, she didn't compromise:

She would succeed at both.

"I made study my first priority, but I still loved athletics because I knew the only way I could pursue my academic papers was through sports bursaries."

Her father was convinced running would be a distraction to his daughter, but far from holding her back, athletics proved to be the catalyst for Nakaayi to fulfil her educational ambitions.

"I got a sports bursary around the age of nine to study in one of the good schools in town. I went to a boarding school and I wasn't paying anything there because I had the talent of running, and I had to make sure I studied hard and trained hard in order to keep on having that sports bursary."

In the end, Nakaayi's parents could do nothing but change their minds. Athletics was proving to be far more valuable to the family than they had ever imagined possible.

"I started to access different competitions to represent Uganda and I started receiving some money. It wasn't a lot but it was some money and that money was making a great change for my family and even my life as well."

Proving wrong the doubters

"When you talk about 2010, I only remember Singapore," said Nakaayi, the experience clearly etched into her consciousness.

The occasion she was talking about was the Youth Olympic Games and Nakaayi had loved every last minute of it.

"It was my first time in an Olympic Village, everything was perfect because the dining was working 24 hours, whenever you wanted to eat you could just go and eat. Everything was properly organised, and even interacting with different athletes from different countries was so amazing for me."

The official scorecard shows a DQ (disqualification) next to her name, but that hasn't dulled any of Nakaayi's enthusiasm for those first Olympic Games.

"It was so inspirational in my life," she said.

After the Youth Olympics, Nakaayi got herself a coach, and for the first time embarked upon a structured training programme. It didn't take long for the results to follow.

At the 2011 Youth Commonwealth Games on the Isle of Man, she won gold in the 400m in a time of 57.16. But still, the people around her refused to believe in her talent.

Nakaayi's response was resolute: "I decided to not listen to anyone. To just fight for my dream."

By this time, there wasn't much that could distract her from her destiny. Other than what was about to happen.

Pushing beyond the limits

At a festival to celebrate 50 years of Ugandan independence, a relay had been organised and many scouts from universities would be in attendance.

Each young athlete would run a 10km leg before handing the baton off to the next runner. Nakaayi was to run the second leg, with Winnie Nanyondo – her fellow finalist and celebratory dance partner at Doha 2019 – running the third.

"I was receiving the baton but I was going to pass by my school where I studied," she explained. "I knew they were waiting for me to see how I was running."

But things didn't go to plan.

The first runner on her team was not as strong as Nakaayi and when she received the baton she was disappointed to find herself in fifth place.

"I said, 'I have to use my energy so when I reach the school at least I'm leading. So I sprinted as if I was going for 400 metres and by the time I reached the school I was in second position, but I was feeling tired."

She passed by her friends with three kilometres left to run, but as she spent every last ounce of her energy completing her leg, something horrible dawned on her. The location she had expected to hand over the baton was further away than she had been told.

"The lactic acid had already accumulated in my body I was feeling as if I was paralysed, but I never wanted to give up because I knew I was in second place."

"I lost understanding from there. I didn't know what was happening, but people told me I was staggering, running in a zig-zag."

Nakaayi later learnt that she had reached the end of her relay leg, but by that time it was too late. She collapsed in a heap on the ground and slipped into a coma. Nanyondo, her friend, fell down next to her, unable to run her relay leg due to the anguish she felt about what had just happened.

The nature of the race had been so brutal that five other girls had collapsed that day. Meanwhile, word spread like wildfire that Nakaayi was dead and when her mother arrived at the hospital – barefoot and desperate – it looked as if Nakaayi's career in athletics was over.

From near-tragedy to hope

"By the time I gained my understanding, I couldn't remember that I was Halimah. I kept on praying to God to give me a chance to live again," she said, thinking back to the moment she regained consciousness surrounded by doctors.

She had spent the last four hours in a coma and the medics who had saved her told her to take this as a sign: "Since God saved you from this day, never do athletics again," they pleaded. And everyone else agreed.

But at this point, Nakaayi – so certain of her own pathway – would not be bowed.

The moment she finished her final exams at school, she said to herself: "I won't quit. I feel that I'm supposed to be an athlete."

What followed was a long and difficult return to full training, permeated by the fear that she would face the same terrifying health issues again.

Give up, they said

In 2019 in Doha, Nakaayi was on the final lap of the most important race of her life: the World Championships final. When she sprinted past leader Ajeé Wilson (USA) with 50m to go, not many in the stadium would have known the struggle it took for her to get to the starting line, let alone win a gold medal.

As she hugged her friend Nanyondo, before breaking out into that unforgettable dance, she had fulfilled, not only the dreams of her fellow Ugandans but also a destiny she refused to let go.

And that is far from the end of her story.

While Nakaayi prepares to race in the Tokyo Olympics, the pinnacle of any athlete's career, she can be proud that she also fulfilled her academic dreams after graduating with a degree in Computer Science and Information Technology.

And she is also giving back to the community, helping the young women of Uganda to flourish and follow their dreams – and most of all to never think they are limited by who they are, where they were born or what the world thinks they are supposed to do.

"Success is by choice, not by chance," Nakaayi said, summing up her outlook on life and the message she would like to send to women across the world.

"Once you have a dream, fight for it."