A team consisting of five refugees is currently competing at the European Games in Poland. It is the first such team to participate in a continental tournament. The athletes hope to make the Refugee Olympic Team at next year's Paris Olympics.
Following the participation of refugee teams at the Rio and Tokyo Olympics, a dedicated team made up of five refugees is currently competing at the 2023 European Games in the Polish cities of Kraków and Małopolska. It marks the first time a refugee squad is competing in a continental game.
The team comprises Iranian taekwondo athletes Kasra Mehdipournejad, Kimia Alizadeh Zenoorin and Dina Pouryounes Langeroudi as well as boxers Cindy Winner Djankeu Ngamba from Cameroon and Farid Walizadeh from Afghanistan.
According to the website of the European Games, the five athletes competing as part of the European Olympic Committee (EOC) Refugee Team are all scholarship holders on the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Refugee Athlete Support program and are aiming to be part of the IOC Refugee Olympic Team for Paris 2024.
Two of them -- Alizadeh and Pouryounes Langeroudi --- were part of the Refugee Olympic Team at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
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3rd Olympic team in the making
According to the IOC, 53 athletes currently have scholarships via the Olympic Solidarity program and are training in a new home country for a spot on the Refugee Olympic team for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Hailing from 12 countries and living in 19 host countries, they represent 13 sports including athletics, wrestling and swimming.
The Paris Games, which will run from July 26 through August 11 next year, will be the third Olympic Games where a group of athletes who fled their home countries will represent the currently more than 100 million forcibly displaced people.
In 2015, the IOC announced the creation of a refugee team for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. That year, more than a million refugees entered Europe after fleeing wars in the Middle East, Africa and central Asia. Consisting of four women and six men, the squad competing in athletics, swimming and judo was one of the feel-good stories of those games.
With 29 members, the Tokyo squad was almost three times as big as the 10-member inaugural refugee team at the Rio Games. The team selected by the IOC was drawn from 56 scholarship holders.
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Rocky road to Paris
Boxer Cindy Ngamba, one of the five refugee athletes currently competing in Poland, has fought hard to get where she is today. She had to clear several hurdles on her way to the Paris Olympics.
Ngamba, who grew up in Cameroon but came to the UK when she was 11, hopes to represent the refugees of the world at the 2024 Olympic Games in the French capital Paris.
The 24-year-old says it's too dangerous to return to Cameroon because of her sexuality. LGBT people in the west-central African country face arrests, abuse and violence.
"It's illegal to be gay in my country. If I were sent there, I can get beaten, imprisoned or have trouble," she recently told DW in an interview.
Competing in Poland is the latest step toward her Olympic dream.
"Being able to get in on the number one stage and have everyone looking at me -- not just as a refugee, but as Cindy Ngamba; someone who put the work in," she told DW.
Also read: 'My best and last chance' – Iranian refugee hopes to make Olympic dream a reality
Refugee flag bearer
Fellow refugee athlete Kasra Mehdipournejad from Iran, who has seen neither his parents nor his siblings for six years since they advised him to remain in Germany, was the flag bearer for the Refugee Team at the European Games during the opening ceremony on June 21.
Despite qualifying for the Iranian national team several times, Mehdipournejad never represented them, news agency AFP reported. Insofar, competing on the refugee team has offered him an unexpected chance at the international level.
"I learned of the IOC refugee scholarship program, applied in 2018 and they began to support me in 2019," the 30-year-old told AFP. "Without their support this would not have been possible."
The third edition of the European Games began on June 21 and will end on Sunday (July 2).
with AFP