No team has shone brighter in Rio.
During a controversial Olympiad, beset initially by concerns over environmental sustainability and social tensions, and then by poor attendances and allegations of doping, the refugee team, featuring 10 athletes displaced from their homelands, has illuminated the Games with brave performances in the swimming pool, at the running track and on the judo mat.
While many athletes have been more celebrated, none have more heart-warming stories. Here is the tale of the world’s team, and their journeys from desperation to the glory of competing in Rio de Janiero.
The refugee track and field athletes attended a training camp in Kenya in the run-up to Rio. Rose Nathike Lokonyen, top, jogs along a dirt track in the early morning glow. The high altitude camp, in the Ngong hills east of Nairobi, gave the rookie Olympians a taste of how the world’s elite athletes prepare for global competitions.
As well as competing, refugees have managed to fit in a little sightseeing. Here, a volunteer takes a photograph with four team members at the Christ the Redeemer statue.
Refugee athletes enter the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony. Rose Nathike Lokonyen, an 800m runner originally from South Sudan, joined sports legends such as Michael Phelps (U.S.), Rafael Nadal (Spain) and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (Jamaica), carrying the flag for her delegation. More than 340 million people watched the ceremony worldwide.
Yusra Mardini, a Syrian swimmer, was the first member of the refugee team to compete. Last summer, Mardini and her sister fled Syria for Europe. As they made their way across the Mediterranean to the Greek island of Lesbos, their dinghy began to sink. Yusra and her sister Sarah jumped into the water and helped drag the boat towards shore — for three and a half hours. As they neared land, Mardini succumbed to exhaustion and was helped, shivering, back into the boat. Twenty-five days after leaving Syria, Mardini and her sister arrived in Berlin.
In Rio, less than a year after arriving in Europe, Mardini won her 100m butterfly heat in a time of 1:09.21 — not quick enough to qualify for the semi-finals, but impressive enough to achieve her ambition of making all refugees “proud.”
Rami Anis, another Syrian, was next in the pool under the Refugee Team banner.
Anis left Syria for Turkey in 2011 as the civil war began to intensify. After spending four years in Istanbul, Anis made the harrowing journey across Europe, by dinghy, bus and train, before eventually arriving in Belgium.
He now trains at the Royal Ghent Swimming Club. Anis set a personal best time of 54:25 in his 100m freestyle heat and hopes to swim under his own country’s flag in Tokyo in 2020.
Congolese judokas Popole Misenga, top, and Yolande Mabika departed the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2013 for the world championships in Brazil — and never returned. Both defected due to the conflict in the central African country. Misenga’s mother was killed during the civil war at the turn of the century, and though the war is officially over, fighting still rages. Mabika, now 28, hasn’t seen her family since she was a child, but hopes her time in the Olympic spotlight may reunite them.
Misenga won his first round bout in the men’s 90kg class in Rio, against Indian Avtar Singh, before losing to Gwak Dong-han of South Korea in the last 16. In the women’s 70kg competition, Mabika was knocked out in the first round by Israeli Linda Bolder.
Yiech Pur Biel, pictured looking down on Rio de Janiero, has only been running competitively for a year. One of five South Sudanese refugees in the Olympic squad, his running education came barefoot because he didn’t own shoes.
Biel hasn’t seen his family in over a decade, and has no idea whether they are alive — though he recently received a tip that they are currently in Nasir, South Sudan. “Sometimes I think about it and say, O.K., maybe they are alive, and it makes me happy. I say … maybe. Imagine: For 12 years I never see my father, and then this guy tells me that he’s alive. It’s hard,” he told Sports Illustrated.
He finished 8th in his 800m heat, in 1:54.67 — a remarkable time given his relative inexperience at the event.
Anjelina Nadai Lohalith, who dreams of returning to South Sudan to build a better house for the father she hasn’t seen in 15 years, competed in the women’s 1500m first round, where she finished in a time of 4:47.38.
In 2001, Lohalith was separated from her family as violent clashes engulfed her home region and, like Yiech Pur Biel, she ended up in the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. The camp is home to an estimated 200,000 refugees.
“Nobody can feel happy when you are chased or you stay in another country. But right now I feel proud. I’m proud to be a refugee,” Lohalith told Sports Illustrated. “We are representing the millions of refugees all over the world. Maybe, in years to come, I will represent myself. But at this moment we are their light.”
Flag-bearer Rose Nathike Lokonyen, another South Sudanese competitor, also spent 13 years in the Kakuma camp. After discovering a love of — and talent for — running during her time in the camp, Lokonyen was selected to receive support from the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation. Both Lokonyen and Lohalith now train with the foundation’s pioneer, Tegla Loroupe, the former marathon world record holder.
On a sweltering day in Rio, Lokonyen ran her 800m heat in 2:16.62.
James Chiengjek’s father was a soldier in the Sudanese civil war. He died when James was just 11, and the family — fearing kidnap — escaped the war-torn nation.
They also arrived at the Kakuma camp where James began running and training with older boys. “That’s when I realized I could make it as a runner — and if God gives you a talent, you have to use it,” he said.
In Rio, Chiengjek’s Olympic 400m adventure came to an end in the first round. He ran a time of 52:89. Though, in some ways, his run was just as inspiring as champion Wayde van Niekerk’s world record dash.
The final South Sudanese team member, Paulo Amotun Lokoro, was raised as a cattle herder before civil war forced his family to flee to Kenya in 2004.
“If I do something better in my life, I want to help the refugees who have suffered like me,” Amotun said of his Olympic opportunity. “So many refugees have talent but don’t have a chance.”
Amotun ran in the same heat as reigning Olympic champion Taoufik Makhloufi, where he finished in 4:03.96 to the Algerian’s 3:46.82.
Yonas Kinde is the only refugee team member yet to compete in Rio. He will take part in the men’s marathon Sunday. Kinde, originally from Ethiopia, now works as a taxi driver in Luxembourg.
Unlike the rest of the refugee team, Kinde’s personal best time at his event would qualify him for the Olympics anyway.
“I’ve won many races but I didn’t have a nationality to participate in the Olympic Games or the European championships,” Kinde said. “It’s very good news for refugee athletes that Olympic Solidarity have given us this chance to participate here.”
A giant mural painted in celebration of the refugee team lines Olympic Boulevard in the renovated port district in Rio.
The graffiti, created by artists Rodrigo Sini and Cety Soledade, honors the ten stateless Olympic athletes.
