Syrian refugee lights up Games

08 August 2016 - 09:25 By JIM WHITE

"IT'S very cool," said Yusra Mardini, long after she had won her heat in the 100m butterfly. "It is an incredible feeling to be here."For the 18-year-old from Damascus that was no exaggeration. As she stood at the side of the Olympic pool in Rio, slowly making her way past 100 television reporters anxious to elicit her views, her every step accompanied by the thrusting of microphones in her direction, it would have been no surprise if her mind drifted back to June last year.Then she was cast adrift in the Mediterranean, swimming for her life. And here she was swimming for fun in the most rarefied company in the world. She is right: her appearance in Rio is a tale that properly insists on the adjective "incredible"."I'm really lucky to be here to swim with champions," she said. "That feels so amazing."Mardini's is the most extraordinary tale of these Games, a story of such spirit and upliftment, a story that speaks to the very purpose of sport.A promising swimmer in her native Syria, backed by the country's Olympic programme, she trained for much of her youth in a pool in Damascus, her ambition one day to represent her country in the Games.But as her homeland imploded around her, even an activity as wholesome as going for a swim became freighted with danger. After the roof of her training pool was blown off by a bomb swimming became impossible. Her dreams appeared over.Besides, more important was survival. And as her neighbourhood became a death zone, she and her sister were encouraged to join the exodus for Europe.After venturing across Lebanon and Turkey, the sisters boarded a boat heading for Lesbos.The boat they were on, a dinghy meant to carry no more than six passengers, was rammed with 25 desperate refugees fleeing misery.Like many a craft making the hazardous journey across the sea, it was soon in trouble. When it was decided that some of the passengers had to jump, Mardini and her sister were two of only four on board who could swim.They leapt in and pushed the dinghy for 5km until they reached Lesbos, in the process saving the lives of those who remained on the vessel."I thought it would be a real shame if I drowned in the sea because I am a swimmer," she said with characteristic self-deprecation of her determination.She arrived in Berlin in August last year. There, she made her way to the pool Hitler had commissioned for the 1936 Games.Her prodigious skill in the water was soon noted by a coach who began to work with her, thinking she might make the 2020 Games in Tokyo.She worked prodigiously, getting up at four every morning to train before school, determined to make the most of the opportunity she had been gifted."When my sister wants to encourage me she says show them what a refugee can do."And when her coach heard that the IOC was putting a team of refugees together for Rio, he proposed that she should be selected. So she is now part of a 10-strong team of the dispossessed.On Friday night she was in the Maracana at the opening ceremony, thrilled to walk behind the refugee banner, relishing the warmth of a reception so loud it threatened the superstructure of the stadium."It was really cool, the way everyone welcomed us."In truth, that was the highlight of her Games: Mardini is not going to be stepping on to any podium here. She was placed in the slowest heat of her discipline, among Erica the Eels from Qatar, Yemen, Rwanda and Grenada. But when she walked into the pool she was cheered to the echo, her presence there a wonderful moment of humanity in an event increasingly dominated by commerce.She is a potent symbol of sport's proper purpose. - ©The Daily Telegraph..

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