From the beginning, the Refugee Olympic Team’s goal has been much bigger than a medal. At the Paris 2024 Games, the group’s 13 female athletes hope to be a reminder of what refugees can achieve.
From left: Refugee Olympic Team athletes Dorsa Yavarivafa, Manizha Talash, Masomah Ali Zada, Eyeru Gebru, and Saman Soltani in Bayeux, France.are all about achieving what looks impossible. With knifelike focus, competitors often spend a lifetime climbing toward this goal. They hammer out grueling training schedules and exacting diets, make invisible-to-us sacrifices, and overcome injuries so that they can sprint faster, swim longer, and push harder than most people watching at home can imagine.
“impossible, just a dream in my head,” she says. And yet, ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, Ali Zada became the first refugee in France to receive an IOC Refugee Athlete Scholarship. Now, she wants the team to serve as a reminder of resilience, not just to her fellow athletes but to all refugees: “The members of the Refugee Olympic Team, they did it. They realized their dream, they worked hard.” The message to those watching: “You can also do that.
So far, the team hasn’t accrued any medals, though Muna Dahouk — a judoka originally from Syria who first competed in Tokyo — is hopeful that could change this year. But even if it doesn’t, “it is so important to me to show the world what refugees can do. We are strong, we are the same as other athletes,” Dahouk, 28, says. “It’s true that we came from hard conditions and from bad situations. Even then, we are still standing on our own legs and we can fight.
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