▲ Team of athletes from 11 countries, including two Cubans and one Venezuelan. Photo Europa Press
Ap y Afp
La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, May 3, 2024, p. a10
Lausanne. The Olympic refugee team for the Paris Games will have 36 athletes from 11 countries, including two Cubans and one Venezuelan.
The Latin Americans are the canoeist Fernando Dayán and the weightlifter Ramiro Mora, both from Cuba, as well as the Venezuelan shooter Edilio Centeno. Three years ago, Dayán won the Olympic gold medal along with his boat partner Serguey Torres in the thousand meters.
Led by the Afghan cyclist Masomah Ali Zada, who studies in Lille and who already participated in the Tokyo Games three years ago, the 23 men and 13 women will participate in the river parade along the Seine only behind Greece, the Olympic nation, at the opening ceremony on July 26, ahead of the rest of the delegations.
It will send a message of hope to more than 100 million displaced people in the world. At the same time, it will serve to raise billions of people’s awareness of the extent of the refugee crisis, IOC President Thomas Bach said by videoconference.
Instead of competing under the Olympic flag, the refugees will have their own emblem: a heart in the center, surrounded by arrows symbolizing that everyone has a shared experience.
The team will use the acronym EOR after the French name Équipe Olympique des Réfugiés.
Having our own emblem creates a feeling of belonging and allows us to also represent the population of more than 100 million people who share this same experience, said chef de mission Masomah Ali Zada, an Afghan who competed in cycling at the Olympic Games. Tokyo. I can’t wait to wear it with pride!
Dayán defected from the Cuban team in 2022 during a trip in Mexico, crossed the border to reach the United States and has settled in Florida.
According to the IOC, Mora left Cuba in 2019 and settled in the United Kingdom. He first worked in a circus in Blackpool and eventually ended up in Bristol, where he took up weightlifting again, winning British championships in 2022 and 2023.
Before leaving Venezuela, Centeno ran a shooting academy and became the country’s number one, according to the IOC. He now trains with his sister in Mexico, where he settled.
This is the third team of refugees to attend the Olympic Games. The team was created by the IOC for the Rio 2016 Games and allows athletes to participate, even though they were forced to leave their countries of birth.
Ten athletes competed in Rio, with Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini the first. The number increased by 29 in 12 sports in Tokyo.
The IOC created the Olympic refugee team in 2015, a year marked by the displacement of millions of people, many of them due to the war in Syria.
2024-05-03 08:50:26
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