Syrian refugee swimmer makes mark at Paralympics
ATHENS, Greece, July 14, (AP): When Ibrahim Al Hussein fled Syria in 2012 after being wounded by an explosion during his country’s civil war, his life was turned upside down.
Nearly a decade later, Al Hussein is preparing for his second Paralympic Games in Tokyo and credits swimming with helping him to rebuild his life and integrate after migrating to Greece.
At the outdoor swimming complex used for the 2004 Olympics and Paralympics in Athens, Al Hussein stretches and removes his prosthetic leg in a shady spot before entering the water for two hours of training under the hot sun.
PARA/OLYMPICS
“I started swimming when I was 5 years old. My father was my trainer in my country, Syria. I feel very comfortable when I’m in the water despite all the tiredness, all the training and effort I put in,” he said in a recent interview.
“I consider myself to be like a fish. It’s as if I won’t be able to live if I’m away from the water. The day I don’t train because of one reason or another, I’m often upset and feeling gloomy.”
As the war in Syria raged in and around his home city of Deir ez-Zor in 2012, Al Hussein was visited by a friend. When his friend left to go home, the friend was shot, Al Hussein says. He ran over to help.
“I was about to carry my friend to a safe place or hospital. But unfortunately as soon as I reached him, five seconds or less later there was an explosion beside me,” he said. His friend also survived.
Al Hussein received emergency medical treatment in a makeshift clinic before being taken to neighboring Turkey. He lived on the margins there and struggled with mobility, and eventually made the dangerous boat journey to Greece in February 2014.
“In the first days when I came to Greece, I found a doctor who helped me. After that, I decided to stay here.
I found what I was looking for and had no reason to continue looking,” he said.
Al Hussein met a doctor who agreed to treat his injury and provide him with a prosthetic, and began to feel at home in Greece. A year later, he finally entered the pool again, swimming with a club based at the Olympic Aquatic Center in Athens. By coincidence, he had watched the 2004 Olympic swimming competitions on TV when they were held at the same venue, and had dreamed as a teenager of one day competing there.
Al Hussein’s first venture back into the pool eventually led to him returning to competition, first at a local level, then further afield. His success as a refugee athlete attracted attention in Greece, leading to an invitation to carry the Olympic torch as part of the relay for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
From there, he was approached about swimming for the International Paralympic Committee’s new refugee team.
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TOKYO: Athletes at the Tokyo Olympics will put their medals around their own necks to protect against spreading the coronavirus.
The “very significant change” to traditional medal ceremonies in the 339 events was revealed Wednesday by International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.
“The medals will not be given around the neck,” Bach told international media on a conference call from Tokyo. “They will be presented to the athlete on a tray and then the athlete will take the medal him or herself.”
“It will be made sure that the person who will put the medal on tray will do so only with disinfected gloves so that the athlete can be sure that nobody touched them before,” Bach added.
The Olympic approach is different to soccer in Europe where UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has personally hung medals around the necks of players at competition finals in recent weeks.