Peter Bol (runner)
Nagmeldin "Peter" Bol (born 22 February 1994) is an Australian middle-distance runner. He competed in the men's 800 metres at the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics and holds the national record. Early life and education. Bol was born on 22 February 1994 in Khartoum, Sudan. His mother is Sudanese, and his father from the region that is now South Sudan. His family fled the civil war in Sudan when he was four. In 2016, it was falsely reported that they lived in an Egyptian refugee camp for four years before emigrating to Australia. In August  2021, Bol wrote in "The West Australian" that "despite what some people have said and written, we never lived in a refugee camp." According to "Media Watch", the false story originated with a 2016 article in "The Sydney Morning Herald". At the age of eight, Bol arrived in Toowoomba, Queensland. He grew up in Perth and attended St Norbert College on a basketball scholarship. In 2017, he completed a degree in construction management at Curtin University. , he was intending to train as an engineer. Athletics career. Bol was a promising basketballer in Perth, Western Australia. When he was 16, a  teacher at St Norbert College suggested he try 800 m running after a promising cross-country race. In 2013, Bol won the junior men's 800 m at the Australian Athletics Championships in a personal best time of 1:48.90. In December 2015, he moved from Perth to Melbourne to train with coach Justin Rinaldi, who also coached joint national record holder Alexander Rowe. In 2016, he ran two Olympic qualifying times (1:45.78 and 1:45.41) and was selected on the Australian team for the 2016 Rio Olympics. At the Olympics, he finished sixth in his heat in 1:49.36. At the 2017  IAAF World Championships, he finished seventh in his heat in 1:49.65. In June 2018 at an IAAF meet in Stockholm, Sweden he set a personal best of 1:44.56 in the 800 m defeating training partner Joseph Deng. At the 2020 Summer Olympics, Bol came first in his semi-final with a personal best time of 1:44:11. He then competed in the final where he came fourth and missed out on a bronze medal by 0.53 of a second. The winner, Emmanuel Korir clocked a slower time of 1:45.06 to win than the time that Bol had accomplished in his heat