Hiko Tonosa now proud to call Ireland home

In March last year, Hiko Tonosa received his Irish citizenship at a ceremony in Killarney and as grateful as he was for the opportunities it presented, what most excited him was the chance to represent his adopted nation at major championships. “I gave everything for my running,” he says

Hiko Tonosa: Received Irish citizenship last year. Photo by Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

So far this year he’s trained with world and Olympic champions, he’s beaten Ireland’s best, but for Hiko Tonosa this is the day that matters most: tomorrow’s national cross country championships in Santry, and an opportunity that comes along once in a career.

Finish in the top three and the 26-year-old will earn an automatic spot on the Irish team for the European Cross Country, set to be staged on home turf in Abbotstown on December 12. Of course, for Tonosa, home has long been a fluid concept, the winds of change carrying him from Ethiopia to Japan to Ireland, his home for the last four years — his home for the foreseeable future.

It was the summer of 2017 when he first arrived, paying his own fare to race at the Cork City Sports and Morton Games. But a phone call the morning of the latter event informed Tonosa that his best friend, an athlete, had been shot dead by government forces in Ethiopia for the simple act of attending a protest, Tonosa told the same fate likely awaited him if he returned home.

He had spent the previous year in Japan, racing in Ekiden races on a semi-professional basis, but towards the end of 2016 Tonosa returned to Ethiopia and found a country in conflict due to the continued marginalisation of Oromo people, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia. Tonosa joined his friends to peacefully protest but he was arrested and put in prison for almost three months, where he endured regular beatings.

So he knew, when he sought asylum in Ireland in 2017, that it would be some time before he went back. Only last year — with Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed promising citizens who fled during the conflict would be free to return — did he attempt it, re-uniting with his mother after three years apart.

In March last year, Tonosa received his Irish citizenship at a ceremony in Killarney and as grateful as he was for the opportunities it presented, what most excited him was the chance to represent his adopted nation at major championships. “I gave everything for my running,” he says.

Ireland is now his home, his future. Tonosa says things have not yet improved for the Oromo people since Abiy Ahmed, an Oromo, took office in 2018, and the situation in Ethiopia remains uneasy, with ongoing conflict between the Ethiopian army and Tigrayan rebels due to the ousting from power of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)..

Tonosa cautions he’s “not a politician” but says the situation is “still bad”. Most of his loved ones live in Addis Ababa, while the violence is further north, but that could change as the TPLF advance towards the capital.

All Tonosa can do is hope for the best and focus on the task at hand, which is to run six laps of Santry Demesne faster than anyone in Ireland tomorrow. At this year’s national championships on the track, he took double gold over 5000m and 10,000m, but cross country is an altogether different beast.

For the past two years, Tonosa has trained under Feidhlim Kelly and his charges at the Dublin Track Club, logging 90-100 miles a week alongside seasoned internationals like Seán Tobin, Andrew Coscoran, and Paul Robinson.

Earlier this year, he returned to Ethiopia for a second time, spending two months training alongside distance-running royalty like two-time world 5000m champion Muktar Edris and Olympic 10,000m champion Selemon Barega.

He mostly followed Kelly’s programme while there, and in May he returned to Ireland in flying form, clocking 13:36.71 for 5000m in Belfast.

In June he made his international debut at the European 10,000m Cup in Birmingham, where he smashed his PB to finish 12th in 28:13.10. In tomorrow’s race, his biggest threat might come from Darragh McElhinney, the 21-year-old who’s been in sparkling form this autumn. “I’m looking to make the team, that’s my first goal,” says Tonosa. “If I make the team, we want to do another job for Europeans.”