The 36 athletes had been introduced on Thursday by the President of the Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, throughout a live-streamed ceremony from Lausanne, Switzerland.
They arrive from 11 nations and can compete throughout 12 sports activities.
Resilience and excellence
“Along with your participation within the Olympic Video games, you’ll display the human potential of resilience and excellence. This may ship a message of hope to the greater than 100 million displaced individuals world wide. On the identical time, you’ll make billions of individuals world wide conscious of the magnitude of the refugee disaster,” Mr. Bach said.
The composition of the crew was permitted by the IOC Govt Board and was primarily based on numerous standards together with, before everything, every athlete’s sporting efficiency and their refugee standing as verified by the UN refugee company, UNHCR.
For essentially the most half they had been chosen from among the many refugee athletes supported by the IOC by a scholarship programme.
Transformative energy of sport
UN Excessive Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi stated the Refugee Olympic Staff ought to remind everybody of the resilience, braveness and hopes of all these uprooted by battle and persecution.
“The crew additionally reminds us that sport could be transformative for individuals whose lives have been disrupted in typically harrowing circumstances. Transformative not only for Olympians, however for everybody,” he added.
Flying their very own flag
Paris will mark the third look of a refugee crew on the Olympics, which debuted on the 2016 Video games in Rio de Janeiro, and this 12 months’s squad is the most important up to now.
For the primary time, the crew will compete beneath its personal emblem, as a substitute of the Olympic flag, which options 5 interlocked rings in blue, black, purple, yellow and inexperienced. Their emblem has a coronary heart surrounded by means marker arrows and makes use of the identical colors because the Olympic flag.
“Having our personal emblem creates a way of belonging and empowers us to additionally stand for the inhabitants of greater than 100 million individuals who share this identical expertise,” stated Staff Captain Masomah Ali Zada, who competed on the 2020 Video games in Tokyo.
Meet the athletes
In Paris, the crew shall be competing in sports activities that embrace breaking – a primary on the Olympics – and Manizha Talash from Afghanistan will get to showcase her strikes. She is the nation’s first feminine breakdancer, in response to media stories.
Cindy Ngamba was born in Cameroon and moved to the UK at 11. She was at all times taken with sports activities and initially joined a soccer crew however later found her true ardour: boxing.
Ms. Ngamba trains with the elite beginner GB Boxing Staff and is a three-time English nationwide champion. She additionally made historical past by turning into the first-ever refugee boxer to qualify for the Olympics.
Adnan Khankan has liked judo since he was a boy in Syria, the place he joined the nationwide junior crew and took part in continental championships. Battle pressured him to flee, and he settled in Germany. He recalled watching the Refugee Olympic Staff in 2016 as a second that really gave him hope.
Proficient shooter Francisco Edilio Centevo Nieves was ranked primary in Venezuela and used to run a coaching academy the place he skilled individuals within the sport. He left his homeland collectively together with his sister and now lives in Mexico.
Because the Refugee Olympic Staff prepares for Paris, individuals in every single place can comply with their progress on social media channels.
