Olympic Refugee Team Takes Center Stage at Paris 2024 with Heartwarming Emblem: Meet the EOR Athletes and Their Stories
The Paris Olympics will see a Refugee Team made up of 36 athletes from 11 countries. This team, chosen from over 70 scholarships, was revealed by International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach at an announcement on Thursday. Unlike other teams, the refugees will not compete under the Olympic flag but will have their own emblem featuring a heart surrounded by arrows representing how lost refugees can find their way back. The team, known as EOR or Equipe Olympique des Refugies, will consist of 23 men and 13 women competing in various sports including athletics, badminton, boxing, breaking, canoeing, cycling, judo, shooting, swimming, taekwondo and weightlifting when the Games begin on July 24. Notable athletes include boxer Cindy Ngamba and Ethiopian runner Farida Abaroge among the women and Kasra Mehdipournejad from Iran in taekwondo and Edilio Francisco Centeno Nieves from Venezuela in shooting among the men. Mehdipournejad expressed his excitement for his Olympic dream coming true. However, on Tuesday, a third runner on the team was suspended for a positive doping test. The refugee team was initially created by the IOC for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro to provide asylum for athletes who have been forced to leave their home countries. In Rio there were 10 athletes on the team with Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini becoming the first to compete. Three years ago in Tokyo the team grew to 29 athletes across 12 sports.
