“It combines the highest values of sport, such as integration, education, solidarity and humanity, and represents a message of hope for the world”, highlights the jury.
Surprisingly but not unfairly, the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports has repaid this year in the Foundation and the Refugee Olympic Team. This time it does not appear in the minutes of the jury, presided over by Abel Antnthe name of a champion, an idol, a luminary or a group of them, whose sonority evokes present or past deeds, recalls records or medals and multiplies a famous and smiling face in the headlines. Allyson Felix, Simone Biles, Valentino Rossi, Marc Marquez y Caroline Brownfavorites in the predictions, they will have understood and supported it.
From the field of sport, from the solemnity and prestige of its statement, this recognition reminds the world and its conscience, as if it were even more necessary, more mandatory to do so, especially in the current circumstances known to all, that suffering and injustice are still present among us. It is an award both real and symbolic. He is, first and foremost, humanitarian. “The Refugee Olympic Team combines the highest values of sport, such as integration, education, solidarity and humanity, and represents a message of hope for the world,” said the jury in the ruling read this Wednesday at 12:00 in the Hotel Eurostars of the Reconquest of Oviedo.
RECOGNITION
The Prince (now Princess) of Asturias has always been an award for sporting excellence and human, individual or collective exemplarity, of individuals and institutions. And this time it has recognized an initiative, in 2016, of the highest sports body, the International Olympic Committee (IOC)to provide opportunities for potential elite athletes affected by refugee crises to qualify and participate in the Games.
Refugee athletes participated in the ro gamesin 2016. In 2017, in Lima, at the IOC session, the Olympic Refugee Foundation (ORF) was created “in order to support the protection, development and empowerment, through sport, of children and young people in situations of vulnerability”. Under the leadership of Olympic Solidarity, a scholarship program was established. At the Tokyo Games last year, the Refugee Olympic Team paraded in second place, behind the Greek delegation.
The UN recognizes and applies refugee status to those who, according to the definition of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), “have been forced to flee their country because of persecution, war or violence”.
Undoubtedly, the awarding of this Prize is not at all unrelated to the war in Ukraine, which has made the word “refugee” bitterly topical in all corners of the planet. The jury has been sensitive to such a situation and sent a message of solidarity and hope to the victims. In the words of Thomas Bach when the Team was created: “In an ideal world, this team should not exist.”
Unfortunately, the world has never been, nor will it be, ideal.
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