photo: vaticannews.va
ROME - Fifty days before the opening of the Paralympic Games in Paris, scheduled for August 28, the International Paralympic Committee has announced the names of eight athletes and their leaders who will be part of the refugee team. In 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, there were only two and in 2021 in Tokyo, there are already six athletes. So, together with the 36 refugee athletes on the Olympic team, a total of 45 refugees will be represented at the Games. It is a participation that is a peace project.
For the first time, an athlete residing in Italy has been selected for the Paralympic refugee team: fencer Amelio Castro Grueso, originally from Colombia, who has had the opportunity to train at a high level in Rome with Daniele Pantoni, coach of the Italian National Police, and is particularly close to the inclusive experience Athletica Vaticanathe official multi-sport association of the Holy See. Together with the 36 refugee athletes on the Olympic team, a total of 45 refugees will therefore take part in the Games.
These athletes represent more than 100 million refugees and all persons with disabilities, as they collectively claim. These refugees and Paralympic athletes come from Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Colombia and Cameroon and have been welcomed in Germany, Austria, France, the UK, Greece and also in Italy. They will compete in six Paralympic sports: athletics, weightlifting, table tennis, taekwondo, triathlon and fencing.
According to Andrew Parsons, President of the International Paralympic Committee, if "all athletes with disabilities have stories of incredible resilience, the stories of refugees - survivors of war and persecution - are beyond the ordinary." The reality, Parsons adds, is that "many forcibly displaced people in the world today live in terrible conditions. These Paralympic athletes have persevered and shown incredible determination to make it to Paris, giving hope to all refugees as the Paralympic team shines a light on the transformative impact of sport on the lives of individuals and societies".
Filippo Grandi, the UNHCR High Commissioner, who has been following the Team's affairs closely, gets straight to the point: "At the third Paralympics, these very determined and inspired refugee athletes will show the world what they can achieve if given the opportunity to use, develop and showcase their skills and talents, both in sport and in other areas of life." Sport, according to Grandi, is "key to the inclusion and integration of refugees into their host communities."
And sport as seen through the eyes of athletes with disabilities and refugees is also particularly supported by Pope Francis. In the preface to the book "Games of Peace" (published by the Vatican Publishing House on the initiative of the Athletica Vaticana), the Pope encourages precisely this inclusive sport: 'I think of athletes with disabilities. I am always amazed to watch their performances and listen to their words. The goal of the Paralympic Movement is not just to celebrate a great event, but to show what people - even those who have been severely injured in life - are capable of achieving when given the opportunity. And if that is true for sport, it must be even more true for life."
In his preface, the Pope writes: "I think of refugee athletes who tell stories of redemption, of hope (...). They are not "only" women and men who are engaged in sport. They are women and men of peace, protagonists of tenacious hope and the ability to rise again after a 'bad moment'".
The Peace Games book also features the testimony of Ibrahim Al Hussein, a Syrian who will be competing in his third Paralympics as part of the refugee team - he was the flag bearer in Rio de Janeiro 2016 - and has switched from swimming to triathlon (and confides that raising the money for "the equipment needed to compete in a triathlon" is a real feat). In the book, he says: "In 2012, I was running towards a better tomorrow - I was born in 1988 in Deir el-Zor, Syria - when a sniper hit one of my friends. He was lying on the ground, screaming for help. I knew that if I went to his aid, I might be hit too. But then I would never forgive myself for leaving him in the middle of the road. A few seconds later, a bomb went off right next to me. I lost the lower part of my right leg and my left leg was also damaged."
Ibrahim was a very good swimmer, but in the tragic situation of the war and with the amputation of his leg, his passion for the sport seemed to have faded. "Somehow I got to Istanbul and there I found generous people who got me a precarious prosthesis, but better than nothing: I had to repair it every 300 metres. Then on the night of 27 February 2014 - the date of the beginning of my 'second life' - I crossed the Aegean Sea on a boat to the Greek island of Samos." Generous people offered him a job and donated a real prosthesis. And Ibrahim started swimming again to get his life back, so much so that he was able to compete in the 2016 Paralympics.
Zakia Khudadadi - the only woman on the team - has already competed in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, following her daring escape from Afghanistan after the "Olympic ban" imposed by the Taliban. Now living in Paris, she won the 2023 European Taekwondo Championships (under 47kg category) and dedicated the victory to the women of her country.
Guillaume Junior Atangana, a Cameroonian visually impaired sprinter who now lives in the UK, will run with his guide and compatriot Donardo Ndi Nyamjua, also a refugee, in the 100 and 400 metres (T11 category). He finished fourth in the 400m at the Tokyo Olympics, narrowly missing out on a medal. In June, at the Para Athletics Grand Prix in Nottwil, he won the 400 metres and finished second in the 100.
For Iran's Salman Abbariki, who is now based in Germany, this is his second Paralympics after competing in the shot put at London 2012. He won gold at the 2010 Asian Paralympic Games and broke the Asian record.
Iranian Hadi Darvish's Paralympic dream began after watching the London 2012 Paralympics on TV. After arriving in Germany, he lived in a refugee camp with his wife and children for two years. Without money, he found it hard to play sports, but he didn't give up: in June, he won a bronze medal in the under-80kg event at the World Weightlifting Championships in Tbilisi.
Sayed Amir Hossein Pour, an Iranian living in Germany, has lived for a long time in various refugee camps, far from his family. He won two gold medals in table tennis at the 2021 Asian Youth Games in Bahrain.
Hadi Hassanzada, an Afghan, has experienced the drama of multiple displacements in search of a better life and faced difficult situations on refugee routes through Turkey. Today he lives in Austria. Despite having his right hand amputated, taekwondo helps him "turn difficulties into opportunities".
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