New Delhi
Escaping war in Syria and a near-death in the middle of the Mediterranean, and walking across seven countries for 25 days to save her soul, Yusra Mardini could have never thought that one day she will be competing in and holding the flag on behalf of the millions of conflict refugees in the world in the Olympics.
Her story of the struggle to stay alive is folklore among the Olympian and fraternity she is participating in the second Olympics under the banner is the International Olympic Congress (IOC) refugees team at Tokyo Olympic.
The world came to know Yusra’s story at the Rio Olympics 2019 when she for the first time participated as a member of the refugee team and won gold ion butterfly heats.
Yusra Mardini (Pic: Instagram)
Yusra and her sister Sarah were training to be swimmers in their home in Damascus, Syria, when the terrorists flattered their home and caused widespread devastation in their neighbourhood.
She was a 17-year-old when her parents realized they can no longer wish away the perils of living in a war zone. Their relatives managed to ship them across into the southern part of Turkey. There, Yusra spent four nights in the forest. The family had nothing to eat or drink. Their future was in the hands of armed smugglers who had to transport them to Greece via the Mediterranean in a dingy boat.
The dingy carried 20 persons against its limit of seven. Soon its engines seized. The only way for the boat to make move was for some of the passengers should be offloaded. Yusra, her sister and two young men jumped in the ice-cold waters of the Mediterranean.
Yusra and Sarah and two young men held the rope of the boat with one hand and swam with the other for three hours. In fact, they carried the boat to the shores of a Greek. The journey was supposed to end in 20 minutes took three hours and tones of energy of the four young persons.
Swimming in saltwater that pierced their skin and burnt their eyes was not easy. Every moment was a struggle. They had no idea that swimming will one day change their lives.
After arriving in Greece, the refugees' were supposed to go to Germany, some 1,000 miles away, where the government had opened a refugee camp for them. Yusra and her family travelled from Greece to Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria on foot, by train and by bus. After a long and dangerous journey of 25 days, they finally managed to reach Germany. Yusra’s family and others were lodged in a makeshift refugee camp. Her eyes kept looking for a swimming pool.
Soon the girls heard about a swimming coach who was asking people to join a training camp. He turned out to be an Egyptian translator of German and a messiah for the sisters. He gave them access to an old swimming pool in Berlin.
Impressed by the skills of Yusra and Sara, the organizers agreed to provide them with further training.
Though their coach was planning to train Yusra and her sister to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo after four weeks of their training, the IOC announced that a team of refugees would participate in the Rio Olympics of 2019.
It was a dream come true at the Rio Olympics. Yusra led a contingent of refugees and even won an inaugural 100-meter butterfly.
Yusra is now an ambassador of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
She had the honour of receiving the Pope once.
A book on her life has been published and a film about her life is being made for the OTT platform Netflix.
The US publication People’s Magazine included her in the list of the "25 Women who changed the World."
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