Tofiri Kibuuka


Tofiri Kibuuka is a Norwegian athlete. Ugandan by birth, he competed for Uganda before obtaining Norwegian citizenship. He has participated in both the Winter Paralympic Games, in cross-country skiing and in the Summer Paralympic Games, in mid- and long distance running. Active from 1976 to 2000, he won five Paralympic silver medals, and one bronze.

Biography

He holds the distinction of being the first African to have competed at the Winter Paralympics, and more generally the only athlete from a tropical nation to have done so before 2014. He is also one of only two Africans to have competed at the Winter Games, the other being Bruce Warner of South Africa.

Prior to the Paralympics

Kibuuka studied at the Outward Bound School in Kenya.
In 1968, he was one of the first blind people to ascend successfully to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, earning media attention as well as praise from the Ugandan Minister of Labour. Due to this event, he was invited to Norway by an "organisation promoting sports for the disabled". He arrived in Norway in 1972, a year after Idi Amin's rise to power in Uganda. Due to the situation in his country of origin, he was to remain in Norway permanently, but nonetheless competed for Uganda in the 1970s.

Winter Paralympics

Kibuuka made his Paralympic Games début representing Uganda at the inaugural Winter Paralympics in 1976 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. He was his country's sole representative, and, as Uganda was the only African country to compete, he was the first African to take part in the Winter Paralympic Games – eight years before Lamine Guèye of Senegal became the first African to compete at the Winter Olympics.
At the 1976 Games, he competed in two events.
He competed again in 1980, where he was once more the only African competitor. He entered two events:
He did not compete again in the Winter Paralympics. Having obtained Norwegian citizenship, he began to compete for Norway at the Summer Paralympics.

Summer Paralympics

Despite having first moved to Norway due to his potential as a Winter Paralympian, and despite his solid performance for Uganda at the Winter Paralympics, it was as a runner that Kibuuka obtained all his Paralympic medals.
At the 1984 Summer Paralympics in Stoke Mandeville and New York, representing Norway, he entered three events:
In the 1988 Games, he entered only the 1,500 and 5,000m events, winning bronze in the former, and silver in the latter.
In 1992, he was Norway's flagbearer during the Games' opening ceremony. He entered the same events as in 1988, but finished fifth in the 1,500m and fourth in the 5,000m. While Matthews remained Paralympic champion, and Loevaas remained on the podium with bronze, Portugal's Paulo de Almeida Coelho finished second to edge Kibuuka off the podium. However, Kibuuka did also enter the marathon for the first time, finishing in 2:51:34 to take silver, behind Italy's Carlo Durante.
From then on, he would compete only in long distance running. In 1996, he entered the 10,000m as well as the marathon. He finished fourth in the former, in 36:10.58, and sixth in the latter, in 3:05:06. For his final appearance at the Paralympics, in 2000, he entered only the marathon, but injured himself during the race and failed to finish.