The Refugee Olympians in Rio

"Samia Yusuf Omar, who was lithe to the point of frailty, sprinted her way to momentary fame at the Beijing Olympics, in 2008. She was one of two athletes on the team from war-torn Somalia. Only seventeen, she’d had no professional coaching, and had dropped out of school in the eighth grade, after her father died, to help care for five younger siblings while her mother peddled produce. She practiced at a bombed-out stadium in Mogadishu. Female athletes were rare in Somalia, and she faced harassment and intimidation from Islamist militias. In Beijing, she dared to run without a hijab. Virtually no one in Somalia was able to watch her compete—no TV station carried the Olympics, and many Somalis had no television or electricity, anyway. Omar’s running shoes had been donated by runners on Sudan’s team.

Omar competed in the women’s two hundred metres, a middle-distance race. Beating her personal record, at 32.16 seconds, she still finished last—so far behind that the camera couldn’t keep her in the frame—but the crowd roared when she completed the race.

Omar returned to Somalia determined to improve for the 2012 Olympics, in London. But the viciousness of Al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda affiliate, eventually forced her to flee. She journeyed through Ethiopia, Sudan, and Libya, then boarded a smuggler’s boat in the hope of reaching Europe, where she planned to find a coach. In April, 2012, just three months before the Summer Games, she drowned somewhere in the Mediterranean, as thousands of other refugees have."

more in the news story by Robin Wright >> 

The Refugee Olympians in Rio - The New Yorker