Transcript
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Athletes from 203 national Olympic committees are competing in Paris. So why are there 204 Olympic teams? Well, for the third consecutive Summer Games, there's also an Olympic refugee team with 37 athletes. Most hail from countries dealing with war and violence, including Syria, Afghanistan, Congo and South Sudan. I spoke with team manager Gonzalo Barrio.
GONZALO BARRIO: These are athletes who can no longer compete for their country of origin and who cannot yet compete for their new country. And so creating not only the Refugee Olympic Team but supporting international federations in creating their own refugee teams allows them to continue their sporting career just like any other athlete.
FADEL: Do the athletes have any particular trouble traveling and actually getting into other countries, given that they can no longer represent their country of origin or have passports in their new countries?
BARRIO: That's one of the biggest difficulties that they face. Most of the traveling that they have to do - they need to apply for a visa to get to the country where the competition is taking place. And for that, they have documents that are called laissez-passer. And those laissez-passer, which are provided by their host country, allows them to travel to those countries, but they always have - or most of the time has to come with a visa. And it's difficult, depending on where the competition is taking place, to obtain these visas.
FADEL: Now, the IOC first included a refugee team in the 2016 games in Rio. In your experience, working with refugee athletes, what do you see as the benefits of sports in the context of displacement?
BARRIO: Well, I think it's a great leveler, right? It's for athletes who arrive in a new country. Finding a club, finding a federation, finding a coach, even, makes the whole difference. It creates a community for them that then can support them with their integration. You know, it helps them a lot with language skills.
Sometimes we see it with a lot of our refugee athletes. Their coaches actually become their mentors. You know, they will help them finding a house. They'll help them getting an education. Sometimes it's difficult for them, for example, to learn the language if they don't speak the local language at the time. Through training with other athletes, through the competition, you can see that it is really one of the best way to integrate and certainly one of the quickest.
And we have great examples of a lot of athletes who've been with us in the past, in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games or in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, that now hold the nationality of their new country and are actually competing for that new country.
FADEL: What are some of the examples?
BARRIO: Probably one of the most famous examples is Yusra Mardini, who was a swimmer from Syria who moved to Germany. Her story was well publicized and was shown in the movie "The Swimmers."
FADEL: Yeah.
BARRIO: And she's now a German citizen. Aram Mahmoud, who was a badminton player for Syria - he competed in the Refugee Olympic Team in Tokyo in 2020. He's now a Dutch citizen. Cyrille Fagat Tchatchet, who was a weightlifter with the Refuge Olympic Team in Tokyo - he's from Cameroon, and he's now a British citizen and he's now competing for Britain.
We see a lot of them, after Paris, will be within the time frame where they can apply for the citizenship. And ultimately, that is the goal of this Refugee Olympic Team - is to bridge that gap between the time where they can no longer represent the country they are refugees from and the moment they will be able to represent their new country.
FADEL: Gonzalo Barrio is the team manager for the IOC Refugee Olympic Team in Paris. Thank you so much for your time.
BARRIO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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