Play For Goals’ mission is to use football as a social tool to empower others in need.
This is why we decided the focus this month’s Field Notes entry on the Olympic Games, which, since 2016, has welcomed the Refugees Olympic Team (EOR) to participate at the summer games.
When it first competed in the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, the refugee team was a feel-good story. Ten athletes made near-impossible journeys from their four native countries, first to find refuge in other nations, and then to the world’s most prestigious sporting stage. Remember Yusra Mardini, the Syrian teenage swimmer who tread water for three hours to help keep afloat a malfunctioning boat on her journey to refuge in Greece? She was barely 18 in Rio, and is back to swim in Tokyo.
For the 2020 Games, the refugee team has grown in size and scope, with new disciplines and more dedicated training. Thanks to scholarships provided by the IOC through Olympic Solidarity, 56 promising refugee athletes from 13 countries have been training hard in the hope of making it to the Tokyo 2020 team. The 56 Refugee Athlete Scholarship-holders come from 21 host countries – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Portugal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – and represent 12 sports: athletics, badminton, boxing, canoeing, cycling, judo, karate, taekwondo, sport of shooting, swimming, weightlifting, and wrestling.
The final team is made up of 29 athletes who originate from 11 countries and are hosted by 13 others. They belong to the world—hence, they are competing under the Olympic flag.
Their presence is a reminder that even as the world’s attention is turned to other crises, 80 million people remain forcibly displaced. As their numbers go up, so does their relevance on the global stage.
More importantly, the existence of the team frames refugees not as a problem to erase, but as a reality to include. Refugee athletes deserve their place in the Olympics, as they do in society, just like people with regular passports. They are not coming for anyone’s pity – they’re coming for everyone’s medals.
