They left their countries behind. But not their Olympic aspirations

Transcript

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

There are some 43 million refugees in the world, according to the U.N.'s Refugee Agency. Thirty-seven of them will compete here in Paris as the Refugee Olympic Team. The team debuted in Rio with a slate of 10 swimmers, sprinters and judokas from countries like Syria and South Sudan. The size of the team had tripled by the Tokyo Olympics. And this year, it has the most athletes ever. We're going to meet two of them now, starting with the judoka Muna Dahouk.

MUNA DAHOUK: I'm from Syria. I'm 28 years old, and I will represent the refugees for this year.

SUMMERS: Muna began learning judo in Syria when she was 6. Her coach was her father, who owned his own dojo.

DAHOUK: Most of the time, I was, like, crying. I was so like, I don't want to go to training. I just - I want to spend my time in the street with my friend. I want to play. But the thing is, my father, he was thinking, if you want to get your dream in the future and to be, like, a professional athlete, you have to train hard.

SUMMERS: Muna stuck with it and grew to love the sport. But a decade into her training, antigovernment protests engulfed the country...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in non-English language).

SUMMERS: ...Tipping it closer to civil war.

DAHOUK: When the war started in Damascus, I had to stop, like, completely on training.

SUMMERS: Muna's family moved to a safer area, but the war went on. And then in 2015, her father died of a heart attack.

DAHOUK: After my father died, we felt like it's too dangerous to stay there without my dad. And we were so young, and the situation there was, like, so hard and so dangerous. We knew that there is no future for us.

SUMMERS: In the following years, Muna and her mom and brother fled to the Netherlands, and her father's dojo fell into disrepair. But Muna kept the family's judo tradition alive, qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics. And now, she is hitting the mats in Paris. Being here on this Olympic stage, Muna says, it's a realization of her dream and also her father's.

DAHOUK: I'm sure that now my father, he's so proud of me to, like, let my dreams come true and to continue with these hard situations I hadn't before.

SUMMERS: She says she still hopes to return to Syria someday to rebuild her dad's dojo.

DAHOUK: I had, like, in that club, many memories. And even my, like, first steps when I was a baby, I started in the tatami. So yeah, maybe one day I will, like, building this club again.

SUMMERS: Muna Dahouk - she will compete in the judo mixed team events on Friday.

SAMAN SOLTANI: When I was in the water, I feel I'm the most free person in the world.

SUMMERS: This is the kayaker Saman Soltani. She is also 28 and grew up in Iran.

SOLTANI: The story goes back to when I was 5 years old. And my parents send me to the swimming pool to learn swimming. And after two years, I started to be champion in swimming and also artistic swimming.

SUMMERS: Artistic swimming, also known as synchronized swimming - you see, before becoming a globally recognized kayaker and now Olympian, she spent years in the pool. She got so good at artistic swimming she became a national champion in Iran. But the country's restrictions held her back.

SOLTANI: Because competing internationally is forbidden for the women in any sport that you cannot participate with the hijab. So basically, you couldn't go more than that in Iran, unfortunately.

SUMMERS: So two summers ago, Saman went to Barcelona to train with Olympic champions at an artistic swimming camp. She posted about it on Instagram, and soon she heard that Iran's notorious morality police had taken notice.

SOLTANI: I was informed that I cannot go back anymore because it's dangerous and what I did is not acceptable according to the Islamic rules. And therefore, I decided to hide somewhere. I didn't have anything. I just had a suitcase for 10 days being in Barcelona, and that's it.

SUMMERS: She sought refuge in Vienna, to stay with the only person she knew in Europe. And she watched from afar when Mahsa Amini died in police custody in Iran, launching huge protests and a corresponding crackdown from the regime.

SOLTANI: The government arrested three of the member of the Iran national team, and so many of my friends were in prison. I was really, really, really scared because I didn't know what will happen in the future. So I was crying, and I was, like, panicking. I couldn't talk at all. I saw nightmare every night that two person come and want to force me to go back to Iran. So it was really, really hard - and in a different country, with different language, with different people. And when I was in Iran, I had a life, and I have friends, and basically, suddenly, in a second, I lost my everything.

SUMMERS: It was in that moment of crisis that she decided to run toward what had always been a lifelong dream, the dream of being an Olympian. She threw herself back into training in a sport she'd also excelled at while in Iran - kayaking. And today, she can finally call herself an Olympian.

SOLTANI: I'm really happy, and I'm really proud that I'm part of this team. We are the people who deserve to live free. We lost our country, our flag, our everything. And in this situation, we decided to again fight one more time, two more times, several times again and again. And yeah, let's see what will happen in the Olympic.

SUMMERS: Kayaker Saman Soltani - she'll represent the Refugee Olympic Team in the women's kayak single 500 meter race next week. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.