FArida Abaroge jogs across the track and field track in Normandy in the early morning sunshine. “When you go through difficult times, mental and emotional health are just as important as physical fitness,” she said during training for the 1,500 meters at the Paris Olympics. Abarroge is a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Refugee Group, which represents more than 100 million displaced people. “This team is like a family,” she said.
When Agbaloji, 30, fled persecution in her native Ethiopia eight years ago, she was a karate black belt, soccer player and future track and field athlete who dreamed of one day competing in the Olympics but didn’t know how to make it happen. Her struggle to find safety lasted for more than a year, traveling to Sudan, an Egyptian refugee camp, Libya where she was imprisoned, and finally to France in 2017, where she was granted asylum. Abarroge’s body was damaged by hardship, lack of food and a gastric surgery that went wrong along the way, but he made a stunning return to sport, taking up track and field.
She credits her local town hall and refugee charity workers in northeastern France for getting her back on the road to the Olympics. “When I arrived in France alone, they asked me what my passion in life was. I said exercise. They took me to a store to buy some sneakers and equipment, and I started running. She now combines her twice-daily training with The support from the International Olympic Committee allowed her to take two months of unpaid leave from the warehouse to attend the Paris Olympics. “The workers there were supportive. Me,” she said.
The Refugee Olympic Team was established in 2015 and participated in the 2016 Rio Olympics for the first time, with a total of 10 athletes competing in three events. But this year, the number of contestants has increased to 37, with participating countries including Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and South Sudan competing in 12 events including cycling, swimming, taekwondo, judo and taekwondo. The team is so important to the IOC that refugee athletes will appear second behind Greece at the opening ceremonies in Paris, carrying the Olympic flag.
The team spent several days training and team-building in Bayeux, Normandy this week before arriving at the Olympic Village in Paris. Together they cycled to one of the D-Day landing beaches in Arromanches-les-Bains, where the guide recounted the details of the fight against fascism in World War II.
On the beach, taekwondo athlete Farzad Mansouri remembered the fallen athletes. The 19-year-old Mansouri represented Afghanistan at the Tokyo Olympics and served as the Afghan flag bearer at the opening ceremony, but he will now compete in his second Olympics as a refugee. Shortly after the Tokyo Olympics, in the summer of 2021, he fled Afghanistan with only his Olympic gear, the Taliban returned to power and tens of thousands tried to board evacuation flights. He spent several months in a refugee camp in Abu Dhabi before arriving in the UK and now lives in Manchester. But his taekwondo teammate Mohammed Jan Sultani, 25, was killed in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport. “When I heard that I had lost my friend, it was a really hard time,” Mansouri said. “I really hope now that we can find peace in my country and around the world.”
Many refugee athletes credit sport with helping them cope with displacement, bereavement and starting from scratch. “I owe my coach my life,” said Ramiro Mora, a 26-year-old Cuban weightlifter who will compete in the 102-kilogram class in Paris. Mora was a member of the Cuban team before joining the traveling circus. He worked for three years at Blackpool Tower Circus, part of an aerial act where he threw acrobats high into the air and caught them. “It requires strength and skill because you’re working eight meters high with your partner’s life in your hands,” he said. He was later granted asylum in the UK and lived in Bristol, where he holds two British weightlifting records and has a three-month-old daughter. “When I’m out there, I think about the sacrifices I’ve made to get here – the training time away from my family and trying to do my best in every move,” he said.
Manizha Talash, 21, left Afghanistan in 2021 and is the only refugee athlete participating in a new urban sport in Paris: extreme sports. As a 17-year-old from Afghanistan, she used to break dance behind closed doors. Now living in Spain, she’s happy to be out in public. “It’s very motivating to build a big team despite coming from many different countries,” she said. “The fact that I’m here for the Olympics is a message to refugees and to all the children in Afghanistan.”
Many athletes have spent difficult years in transit and asylum centres, where there is no space to train. Iman Mahdavi, 29, was a seven-time national youth wrestling champion when he left Iran in 2020 and arrived in Italy via Turkey. “When I became a refugee, wrestling was my only hope. At first I couldn’t train in a club, so I started running to stay active and relieve stress. Now he combines his training with his job as a security guard at a Milan discotheque, chest He has a tattoo of the Olympic rings on his front.
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Arab Sibghatullah, who was a member of Afghanistan’s national youth judo team before fleeing Kabul, has traveled through 13 countries, mostly on foot after dark, trying to stay in shape but worried He can no longer participate in the competition. He was granted asylum in Germany. “This team carries a message of hope,” he said
British boxer Cindy Ngamba, expected to become the first athlete to win a medal for the refugee team, is unable to return to Cameroon because she is gay, where homosexuality remains a criminal offence. Ngamba, who completed school and university in the UK and has a degree in criminology, said: “We go out as a unique team, as a family, and I hope refugees around the world will look at us to stay humble and proactive. myself in a few years and believe that I can achieve something.
Badminton player Dorsa Yavarivafa, 20, who left Iran with her mother when she was 14 and now studies sports science at Middlesex University, is the youngest on the team. Her father introduced her to badminton, but she had never seen her play in public until recently because sports in Iran are divided between men and women. She said her message to all displaced people playing sports is: “Keep training and never give up.”
