Sports editorial.- The International Olympic Committee (COI) launched this Wednesday the “1 in 100 million” campaign in defense of the Refugee Olympic Team, made up of 36 athletes who are preparing to compete in the Paris Gamesand highlighted the “challenges they face when representing a group that reaches one hundred million people.”
The campaign begins with a graphic-novel style short film that presents the personal stories of the athletes of the Refugee Olympic Team, including Cindy Ngamba (boxing), Dorsa Yavarivafa (badminton) and Ramiro Mora (weightlifting), and the scholarship for Athletes Refugees Kavan Majidi (judo), while drawing attention to the shocking magnitude of the crisis mundial of refugees.
When the team debuted in Rio 2016, there were nearly 60 million displaced people around the world. On the eve of Paris 2024, that number, according to UNHCR, has skyrocketed to more than one hundred million and continues to rise, equivalent to approximately 1 in every 70 people living on the planet.
«Qualifying for the Olympic Games means everything to me. All members of the Olympic Refugee Team have different origins and life experiences, but sport unites us. We are a family and we are going to go out there, support each other and show the world what we are capable of doing,” says Cindy Ngamba, a boxer on the refugee team.
The film is part of a broader initiative that gives the team its own unique identity, in line with the design of the first emblem of the Refugee Olympic Team, a unifying symbol that brings together diverse athletes.
The emblem includes arrows, representing the shared experience of their travels, and a heart – which comes from the Olympic Refuge Foundation (ORF) logo – to represent the belonging that the team hopes to inspire and that the athletes and displaced people of everyone has found through sport.
«I will feel very proud to wear the emblem of the Refugee Olympic Team. I represent myself, my career, but also the thousands of people who find themselves in similar circumstances to mine. I hope that seeing us parade in Paris 2024 brings hope and inspiration to people around the world,” confesses Ramiro Mora, a weightlifting participant as a member of the refugee team.
The Refugee Olympic Team for Paris 2024 is made up of 36 athletes hosted by 15 National Olympic Committees (NOCs), who compete in twelve sports: athletics, badminton, boxing, breaking, canoeing, cycling, judo, sport’s shotswimming, taekwondo, weightlifting and wrestling.
The composition of the team has been based on several criteria that include, first of all, the sporting performance of each athlete and their refugee status in the host country, verified by UNHCR. A balanced representation of sport and gender, as well as the dispersion of countries of origin, has also been taken into account. More information about each athlete here.
2024-05-15 12:42:59
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