Reuters
Berlin, March 19: Syrian teenager Yusra Mardini has faced obstacles as a refugee from a war-torn country that most people cannot even begin to imagine and now she wants to go the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
The 18-year-old swimmer trekked across Turkey, made the treacherous sea crossing by boat to the Greek island of Lesbos and gradually weaved her way through most of central Europe with her sister before arriving here in 2015.
She is now part of a group of 43 hand-picked refugees who have been identified by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as potential Olympians and are being supported on their road to qualification.
“I want all refugees to be proud of me, I want to encourage them that even if we are not in our homeland and had a tough way that we can still do great things,” Mardini said, looking very much at ease in front of dozens of cameras and reporters here Friday evening.
“It is hard to leave your home, very hard,” Mardini said during a break from training at the swim club Wasserfreunde Spandau 04. “Our house was destroyed, we did not have anything anymore and we just ran away.”
She swam part of the crossing over to Greece, helping other refugees who were in the water and could not swim.
“We were thinking with my sister when we were in the boat, it would be a shame if we did not help them so we got into the water and helped them. It was a really tough experience,” informed the Syrian teenager.
But then Mardini, who braved bullets and the threat of ISIS soldiers does not want to delve into the past again. Instead she wants to improve on her timings in the 200m as currently she is seven seconds short of the qualification standards.
“I want to go to the Olympics. It is a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” she said with a big grin and confidence to match.
The refugees who will eventually qualify and form a team of between five and 10 athletes in Rio will march as a separate team called Refugee Olympic Athletes (ROA). They will stay along with the other teams in the athletes’ village and have the same privileges as all other 11,000 athletes.
