SYDNEY (AP) — Afghan sprinter Kimia Yousofi is getting ready to compete at her third Olympics after being chosen for the Paris Video games from her coaching base in Australia.
Yousofi, Afghanistan’s flag bearer on the opening ceremony for the Olympics in Tokyo, has been residing in Australia since 2022.
The Australian Olympic Committee on Tuesday congratulated Yousofi on her choice for the ladies’s 100-meter dash.
“It’s an honor to symbolize the ladies of my homeland as soon as once more,” she stated in an announcement launched by the Australian committee. “Women and girls who’ve been disadvantaged of fundamental rights, together with training, which is crucial one.
“I symbolize the stolen desires and aspirations of those ladies. Those that don’t have the authority to make choices as free human beings — they don’t even have the permission to enter a park.”
She stated she’s “deeply grateful to all those that have stood by me on this journey and made this potential … who helped us for each step, for coming to Australia and becoming a member of collectively and chasing our desires and making a brand new life,”
Yousofi was among the many athletes and households who have been resettled in Australia, in her case through Iran, after the Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan and imposed harsh restrictions on ladies and ladies.
Dozens of different Afghan athletes, together with members of the ladies’s cricket and soccer groups, have moved to Australia.
AOC chief govt Matt Carroll stated Yousofi’s story is “one in all inspiration for ladies and ladies in Afghanistan, and wherever on the earth, who’re denied fundamental rights, together with the precise to freely observe sport.”
Afghanistan Olympic Committee president Yonus Popalzay stated there’d be three ladies on the staff for Paris.
“We’re delighted having three feminine athletes for the primary time in an Olympic Video games,” Popalzay stated in an announcement. “We extremely admire the AOC for the assist prolonged to Kimia Yousofi.”
The Afghan Nationwide Olympic Committee operates exterior of Afghanistan to assist and encourage athletes.
John Quinn, Yousofi’s Australian-based coach, will journey to the Olympics as head coach of Afghanistan’s monitor and subject staff.
He stated when he began working with Yousofi they needed to talk through a translation app as a result of they didn’t communicate the identical language, “so we’ve come a great distance in lower than two years.”
The Olympics in Paris might be “a Video games the place she’s not likely working for herself, she’s working for ladies from Afghanistan and she or he’s displaying what’s potential,” Quinn stated. “She offers, for them, hope. And he or she exhibits what optimism seems like.”
Quinn stated Yousofi has improved vastly on the monitor in a technical sense but in addition made strides exterior of the sports activities arenas.
“When you think about the whole lot else she has needed to juggle — coaching, a brand new language, getting her household right here, all these issues,” he stated, “she has been superb.”
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