Tegla Loroupe with IOC President Thomas Bach, accepting the ANOC Award for Inspiring Hope ©Getty Images

Four runners under the team leadership of Kenya's Tegla Loroupe will form an Athlete Refugee Team in the mixed relay event at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Cross Country Championships in Kampala.

The discipline will be making its debut at the Championships which will take place on March 26.

Guided by Loroupe, the former world half marathon champion and marathon world record holder, the squad includes Olympian Paulo Amotun Lokoro, the South Sudanese runner who was part of the Refugee Olympic Team at Rio 2016.

Loroupe was named as the United Nations Person of the Year for 2016, in recognition of the work she did through her Peace Foundation to find and support refugee athletes.

She also acted as Chef de Mission for the refugee team at last year's Olympics.

"It is a great honour for me to lead this team," she told reporters in Nairobi.

"Last year we made history taking a refugee team of 10 to the Rio Olympics.

"Now we have another chance to write history in athletics by competing in cross country."

Paulo Amotun Lokoro, one of 10 athletes in the Refugee Olympic Team at Rio 2016, will take part in the new mixed relay event at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships ©Getty Images
Paulo Amotun Lokoro, one of 10 athletes in the Refugee Olympic Team at Rio 2016, will take part in the new mixed relay event at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships ©Getty Images

Loroupe's Foundation has been supporting the team members while they trained in Eldoret, with competitors selected from the Kakuma camp.

Located near the Kenyan border with Uganda and South Sudan, the camp is home to 180,000 people.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) created the plan for refugee participation last year, setting up a $2 million (£1.6 million/€1.8 million) training fund and facilitating the selection trials which eventually produced the 10 athletes who competed at Rio 2016 in athletics, judo and swimming. 

The IOC claimed that the Rio 2016 team - consisting of five South Sudanese, two Syrians, two from the Democratic Republic of Congo and one Ethiopian - would act as "a symbol of hope for refugees worldwide".

In total, 13 nations are set to contest the mixed relay, the latest innovation for the oldest IAAF World Athletics Series event. 

Each team comprises two men and two women, who will each run a two-kilometre circuit.

Among the stellar names attracted by this Olympic-friendly innovation is Kenya's triple world and 2008 Olympic 1,500 metres champion Asbel Kiprop.

Final entry figures for the event in Kampala suggest it will be the biggest Championship in terms of athletes since 2006, with an expected 557 runners from 60 teams set to compete.

The full Big Read on the Championships can be found here.