Sinead O'Carroll Reports from Paris

“AND FROM THE Refugee Olympic Team…”

Curiosity is piqued when an announcer says those words. 

What has this competitor been through to be here? What backstory of tragedy or horror is etched into their bodies and minds as they take to the shiniest of sports stages? What persecution or sentence awaits them at home even if they have Olympic metal around their necks?

Earlier in the week, 25-year-old Cindy Ngamba became the first ever medalist from the Refugee Olympic Team, taking a bronze in the boxing 75kg weight class. 

As a gay woman, she knows she cannot return to her native Cameroon where same-sex relations are criminalised with prison sentences as punishment. Violence against the LGBT community has also been on the rise, according to Human Rights Watch. 

She has been offered asylum but not citizenship by the United Kingdom. 

The magnitude of her bronze medal feat was recognised by many of the 15,000-strong crowd at Roland Garros getting to their feet on Friday when she bowed out in the silver medal fight against Atheyna Bylon of Panama. 

A day later, Yekta Jamali was called into the Paris South Arena 6 for her Olympic debut. 

America’s Tara Nott was the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in weightlifting. 

That was on 17 September 2000 in Sydney. 

Four years and three months later, Yekta was born in Sedeh Lenjan in Iran. 

Now just 19 years old, she is one of two weightlifters on the 36-person refugee team; she the female in the pair.  

Showing huge promise since taking up the sport six years ago, she travelled to Greece for a junior competition in 2022. She was never able to return to her home, fleeing to Germany to seek asylum.

Although women have been allowed participate in weightlifting in Iran since 2018, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) says that she had to leave her home country “in order to be able to continue safely practising her sport”. 

“My whole life was like this sentence,” she explains, “When I was scared, I was thinking of that and told myself I will go to Germany. I was scared to leave my family, but I did it.

“I am nothing without them, I came to Germany because of the sport, so I have to get up every day. I want my family to be happy. I don’t have just one goal, I have many.”

The sweeping ‘women, life, freedom’ protests of 2022 put a spotlight on the country’s treatment of women following the death of Mahsa Amini in custody of Iran’s morality police in September 2022. 

Fifteen of the 36-person refugee team originally hail from Iran. Of those, five are women. 

Saman Soltani has a similar story to Yekta. She was at an artistic swimming training camp in Barcelona in August 2022, just before the revolt. She had posted pictures on her Instagram account which had triggered the morality police. Initially her family told her to stay abroad for an additional two or three weeks but once the situation escalated, she received a phone call from her parents to tell her not to come back at all. She fled to Austria where she knew somebody from her other sporting love – kayaking. 

“One week after arriving in Vienna this revolution, with women fighting for freedom, started in Iran,” she told the International Canoe Federation.

“The pressure became more and more, and they started to kill the people because of their hair. Imagine me as a member of the national team, participating at the artistic swimming camp, so it was not accepted at all. I had nightmares every night, I cried myself to sleep

“I lost three of my friends in this revolution, and so many of my friends, members of the national team, were in the prison. They tortured them, and two members of the canoe family were also in the prison. It was so much pressure on people who were famous.

“I was panicking, I had a really hard time. I had nightmares every night, I cried myself to sleep, I dreamt someone had come and was forcing me to go back.

“I lost everything. I lost my family, I lost my job, I had a car, I had a gym – I lost it all for nothing. I think its my right to live freely, and to learn, and to improve and to follow my dreams.

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“I had two choices – become depressed and die there, or start one more fight for my dreams.”

When Yekta Jamali stepped on the mat faced with a 95kg, it was her dream fulfilled. Five good lifts in competition later and she had secured a personal best and 9th place in the 81kg category.

“I’m so happy to be here,” she told The Journal through a translator after the Norwegian Solfrid Koanda set an Olympic record on the way to winning gold. 

“It is very important to me, it’s a dream. I am very happy with my personal best too.”

But Jamali’s previous life, as well as the women and girls battling for their rights in Iran are not far from her thoughts. 

She says her family still cry every time she calls home, her mother’s only wish to be able to hug her still teenage daughter. 

Jamali’s focus now is to keep training to improve and move up the ranks in her chosen sport. The youngest in the competition, her future in Germany looks bright. Even though she is abroad, she says, she will keep fighting for women’s right in Iran. 

And her message to those still in her home country is to do the same. 

“They all have to continue fighting, even if it gets hard and it’s not going that well,” she says. 

The Olympic Games have drawn to a close but the battle for home continues for the 36 athletes of the ever-growing refugee team.