Born and raised in Uganda, software engineer and rower Kathleen Noble has represented the East African country in the niche sport at two Olympic games.
Those who did not know probably did a double take at the blonde-haired woman in Ugandan colors in her rowing boat at the Paris Olympics.
But although she is of Irish ancestry, Kathleen Noble is every bit Ugandan as any other who has represented the ‘Pearl of Africa’ at the Olympic Games.
Noble was born in Kampala to Irish missionaries, her father, a doctor, and mother, a teacher, who have lived in Uganda for the past 31 years. “When we grew up in Uganda, people asked where I was from and I’d say ‘Ireland’. But then when I was on holiday in Ireland, people asked me where I was from, and I’d say ‘Uganda’.”
She swam for Uganda while still a schoolgirl and almost by accident now finds herself a double Olympian in the single-scull rowing competition.
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“When I finished high school, I was kind of done with swimming and wasn’t really thinking of continuing. I kind of felt like going to the World Championships was a capstone to that career and something I was very happy with,” she tells FORBES AFRICA.
Instead, she went to Princeton University in the United States (U.S.) to study, and where her roommate was on the rowing team.
“I found that I was missing sport and so she was kind of like, ‘maybe you should try out rowing’ and I’m like, ‘okay, maybe I’ll try it out’.
“The reason I joined was because I wanted to exercise, I wanted a team, I wanted the opportunity to compete, and I wanted to be outdoors. And then I found that I really enjoyed the rowing part of it. And I was quite good at it.”
She was quickly on to the varsity team and not long after, there was a coincidental visit to the school by Uganda’s rowing coach and a connection was quickly made.
“Rodrick Muhumuza was the national coach at the time. And he was there on some kind of training trip. And he ended up talking to a girl who was on my team, and she then told him about me, and then he got in touch with me. And so that’s kind of how I got connected to the Ugandan team. I would never have thought to go looking for them. It had never occurred to me before that that I could compete in international competition.”
After graduating, Noble retired from rowing and did not do it for a year. She was then invited to the Olympic Qualifiers and it did not take long to find her stride and make the Uganda squad for the last Games in Tokyo.
“It was a very restricted experience, because of Covid-19. For me, the primary emotion was just relief, because there were so many steps along the way, where it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen. Paris, with the full experience of having spectators and drawing from that energy, was definitely one of the factors that drove me to go for a second Games.”
Now, she lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the U.S., juggling work as a software engineer with her Olympic training. “The attitude I take towards my training is that I want to do the best that I can within the constraints that I have. And to recognize that, I’m not in a position of being a full-time professional athlete, and that is okay.”
But it will be with pride that she wears Ugandan colors and her journey with rowing in the country is far from over.
“Uganda is a lovely place to grow up and I miss it. Representing Uganda has had a key role in my identi- fying as Ugandan. That has kind of forced me to step up to the plate a little bit and be like, ‘yes, this is my country’, and I feel closer to it for it.
“We have a vision of setting up a High Performance Centre in Uganda. I feel like I’ve been given so many opportunities, and I feel that I want to take those and reflect them back or allow those to be an avenue, through which other people can have opportunities,” Noble says.
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