Yusra Mardini
How
a Syrian refugee became an Olympic hero before the Rio Games even started
Yahoo Sports columnist
Aug 5, 2016, 11:50 PM
RIO
DE JANEIRO — The small boat, just a dinghy, was designed to hold six people. On
this night, there were 20 – all refugees – all trying to crowd in and slip out
of the woods near Izmir, Turkey, out into the Aegean Sea and, a few hours
later, land ashore a on the Greek island of Lesbos and the promised land of
Europe.
Many,
including a then-17-year-old girl named Yusra Mardini, had fled all the way
from war-torn Syria. She, along with her sister, left behind her parents and
made it from Damascus to Beirut to Istanbul to here, overloading this little
boat with a single small outdoor motor – a motor that would die 20 minutes
into the trip.
By
then the boat began to sink, and Mardini, her sister and two men – the only
ones capable of swimming – got out and began pushing and pulling the boat to
Greece, doing anything to avoid becoming another group of refugees who drowned
trying to get to the future, trying to get to Europe. Small children were
aboard. So were terrified adults. For three and a half hours they swam, cold
and exhausted, until the island emerged.
“I
swam for my life when the boat I was in sank,” Mardini said here Tuesday.
“Without swimming I don’t think I would have survived.”
On
Friday, Mardini walked into the Opening Ceremony of the Rio Games as an
Olympian. Her sport? Swimming, of course.
She
isn’t just a swimmer. She is a survivor, part of a small band of heroes
competing under the banner of the Refugee Team, a new designation from the IOC
of displaced athletes who hail, in general, from South Sudan, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo and Syria.
Now
18, Mardini, who eventually settled in Germany, has no illusions of winning a
medal. That isn’t, and never was, the point. Swimming represents normality, a
time to focus on going faster and farther, not on the bombings that destroyed
her homeland, not on the frightful fleeing that led her to Berlin, not the
loneliness of friends and family left behind, some lost forever. In the pool
she is an athlete, not a refugee. Here in Rio she will compete in the 100-meter
freestyle and the 100-meter butterfly.
“My
sport was there when everyone let me down,” she said. “Whenever I had a lot of
problems, I’d run away to the swimming and do my best in the water. I would
jump into the water and leave all of my problems behind my back by swimming
harder.”
This
is the world’s team. This is a reminder that for all the fear and political
vitriol thrown at refugees, that there are real people, with real dreams and
real talent to achieve them. This group is a reminder that human strength can
overwhelm even the most desperate of moments, like tugging a boat through
choppy waters. Lining up at a swim meet is no big deal after that.
“We
are really happy together,” Mardini said of the Refugee Team. “All the team has
a great friendship. We don’t speak the same language, we aren’t from the same
countries, but the Olympic flag brought all of us together. Now we are
representing refugees around the world. We want to show we can do everything we
can for being good athletes and good people. We are trying to give the best we
can.”
This
is a new initiative for the IOC and an important one. The Olympics can be
overrun with nationalism – not always a bad thing, but worth guarding against.
This is a reminder to the expected billion or so people around the world who
tune into the Opening Ceremony that there are millions among us who wish they
could have a country. These are the faces behind the news footage of
blasted-out buildings and tanks moving down dusty roads.
“It
was the normal bombings [and] shootings,” Mardini said of life in Damascus
during a civil war that began in 2011. “We decide to leave because there wasn’t
a normal life. You know there is no future for what you are doing. You are
doing a normal life, you are going to school, going to swimming, going to
training, but you know there is no point anymore. You are doing it because you
love it or it’s your passion but you aren’t going to arrive to the world level
or the Olympic level, so that is why we left.”
It’s
such a dire situation that families willingly split, that parents (Mardini’s
mother is now with them in Germany) send off teen girls to attempt harrowing
runs to potential safety, even as other nations try to push them back.
Mardini
said she misses her old life. Misses her old house – it was destroyed by a
bomb. Misses her old neighborhood and friends. She wants to go back to Syria
one day, but now it is impossible. So she hopes the vision of her and her
fellow refugees reaches televisions in Damascus, televisions everywhere. She
isn’t bitter. She is thankful for the chance, thankful for the voice that the
Olympics have given her, given all of her new teammates.
“A
lot of things happened to our lives and it was really bad, but when you
remember that life will not stop for you, your pain or your problems, at some
point you have to move on,” Mardini said. “There is a lot of problems in our
countries, but every time we remember the good things in it and remember the
memories and everything, we motivate ourselves because there are a lot of
people learning a lot from us.
“There
are a lot of people writing us and telling us their stories and a lot of people
have hopes on us and we can’t let them down,” she continued. “Everyday those
fans are motivating us.”
From
outside that little boat and pulling people to safety, to Rio, a swim for fun
and joy and competition.
“I
want everyone to think that refugees are normal humans who had homelands and
lost them,” she said. “Not because they wanted to and not because they wanted
to leave. They have to leave their countries and everyone is trying to get a
new life, to get a better life. Here we are entering the stadium, encouraging
everyone to do their dreams.”
The
Olympics haven’t even started, yet its first heroes are undeniable.
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