Yusra Mardini is back for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games with two goals: to do great in the competition and to show the world the importance and value of refugees.
Mardini, along with 29 others, are representing the IOC Refugee Olympic Team. She competed Saturday in swimming in the Women’s 100-meter butterfly event at the Summer Games.
“I know that I am maybe not carrying my country’s flag but I’m carrying the Olympic flag which represents the whole wide world,” Mardini told Olympics.com.
23-year-old Mardini escaped the Syrian civil war with her sister in August 2015. The journey took 25 days and consisted of traveling by plane, boat, and swimming. Firstly it was a plane from Syria to Lebanon, and then to Turkey. In Turkey, they went by boat to Greece. However, they ended up swimming and walking on foot to Greece.
“We were on a dinghy that was supposed to be for vacation. Only seven people are allowed on it, but we were 20 people. Usually it’s like 10km, so it takes round about 45 minutes in these small dinghies. The boat was already broken somehow and after 15 minutes the motor stopped; it didn’t work anymore,” says Mardini.
“My sister jumped in the water from one side, and I jumped from the other side which she wasn’t very happy about. She started screaming at me to go up to the boat even though we were both swimmers.”
“After that, two guys also jumped from either side, and we tried with one hand to put it on the rope and then do kicks to stabilise the boat and so on. That took us three hours and a half until we reached the shore.”
The ride to Greece was supposed to take 45 minutes since it is 10 kilometers long. However, the boat built for six to seven people was carrying 20 people leading to it breaking. Mardini eventually found herself, along with her sister, a friend of her father’s, and two others in the water, pushing the broken boat to shore for more than three hours.
“I was a swimmer since I was three years old, it’s something I’ve been working on my whole life. It didn’t just come to me when I came to Germany. It’s just that in Syria, I didn’t have the opportunity. I didn’t have the support of the federation.”
“The whole way, you can just hear all of our prayers in one voice,” Mardini told Olympic Channel earlier this year.
Mardini’s journey didn’t end once she made it onshore to the island of Lesbos in Greece. Along with her family, she traveled through seven countries before finally arriving in Germany, where she currently lives.
She wants to spread a message across the globe that refugees are only seeking opportunities for their talents and asylum from a dangerous country.
Less than a year after her journey, she competed as part of the first-ever IOC Refugee Olympic Team at Rio 2016.
Being appointed the youngest ever UN High Commissioner for Refugees Goodwill Ambassador in April 2017, releasing a book in 2018 about her story, and expecting a film written about her, Mardini is an inspiration to many across the world.
Netflix is currently producing a film directed by Sally El Hosaini about the Mardini sisters entitled The Swimmers, due for release next year. Read more here.
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