Refugee team of 29 athletes picked for Tokyo Olympics

This news has been read 8278 times!

LAUSANNE, Switzerland, June 8, (AP): The refugee team for the Tokyo Olympics has 29 athletes competing in 12 sports. The team selected by the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday was drawn from 55 athletes who fled their home countries and got scholarships to train for the games in a new home country. The 29 – a rise from 10 in the inaugural refugee team at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics – are originally from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Congo, Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela. They will compete in swimming, athletics, badminton, boxing, canoeing, cycling, judo, karate, shooting, taekwondo, weightlifting, and wrestling.

“You are an integral part of our Olympic community, and we welcome you with open arms.” IOC president Thomas Bach told the athletes when In this Aug. 13, 2016 file photo, Monica Puig, of Puerto Rico, returns to Germany’s Angelique Kerber in the gold medal match of the women’s tennis competition at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (AP) announcing their selection, adding they would “send a powerful message of solidarity, resilience and hope to the world.” The team will be managed in Tokyo by officials from the IOC and the United Nations’ Geneva-based refugee agency, the UNHCR. “Surviving war, persecution and the anxiety of exile already makes them extraordinary people,” UNHCR High Commissioner Filippo Grandi said in a statement, “but the fact that they now also excel as athletes on the world stage fills me with immense pride.”

This news has been read 8278 times!