As of: February 1, 2024, 5:07 p.m
By: Nico-Marius Schmitz
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Former competitive swimmer and still connected to the sport: Yusra Mardini.
© Photo: Imago
In 2015, Yusra Mardini helped keep a crowded refugee boat afloat.
The story of the shimmer went around the world.
We met with the 25-year-old in Munich.
In 2015, Yusra Mardini fled Syria with her sister Sara.
A boat was supposed to take the sisters and 18 other people to the Greek island of Lesbos.
But the engine failed.
The Mardinis, both competitive swimmers at the time, jumped into the water and pulled the boat across the sea for hours.
The story went around the world.
Yusra competed for the refugee team at the Rio (2016) and Tokyo (2021) Olympics.
The 25-year-old now works as an ambassador, meets famous people like Barack Obama and Pope Francis and is on Time's list of the 100 most influential people in 2023. We met with Mardini at the ISPO in Munich.
Yusra Mardini, in your presentation at ISPO you talked about sport and resilience. How much has sport helped you in your life?
Sport has helped me a lot since I was a child.
I learned to deal with failure and try again.
I learned to have the courage to follow my dreams.
Swimming is an individual sport, but I still needed my team to make progress.
I think it's the same in life - you need a positive environment to grow.
I had to learn to differentiate between sport and everyday life.
My father trained me, but he didn't let me call him father in the pool because he was the coach.
He was always very hard and I always complained about it.
But little by little I realized how much it helped me.
Sport taught me a lot of values and saved my life.
Her story is told in the Netflix film “The Swimmers”.
It was very important for us to tell this story.
We wanted people around the world to understand what a refugee is.
What a refugee has to go through, why refugees flee their homeland... It was crazy for me to see a film about my life.
I mean, I'm just 25. When I saw the film, I was proud, I laughed, I cried, every emotion was there.
The film is pretty close to my life story.
There are also fictional scenes because we didn't just want to tell our story.
My story is the one percent, 99 percent of refugees have a different story.
You pulled the boat through the water with your sister and other people for hours. How did you get through it mentally and physically?
It was three and a half hours in the water, sometimes the engine worked, sometimes not.
We threw everything out of the boat, the water kept rising into the boat.
We risked everything to survive.
We saw the coastal lights the whole time, but didn't feel like we could get any closer, which was cruel.
The last three days before the boat trip we didn't sleep much, didn't eat much, so we didn't have much energy either.
it was so exhausting and tiring.
But we had no other option, we had to go through with it.
The head was just like in a tunnel, all other thoughts switched off, it was all about survival.
We knew that people would die if that didn't work.
Yusra Mardini with reporter Nico-Marius Schmitz at ISPO.
© Photo: Private
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Your story has gone around the world; you were part of the refugee team at the Olympic Games in Rio and Tokyo.
That was a dream come true.
In Rio I realized who I was and that I had a bigger message than just being a swimmer.
I realized that I have the opportunity to initiate and change things in the world.
I am grateful for this experience, it was simply fascinating.
You have a big platform through social media, meet influential people. How would you describe your mission?
I'm trying to change the perspective of how refugees are viewed.
Sometimes people meet me and say: Oh, you don't look like a refugee at all.
And then I ask: What does a refugee look like?
There is still the perception that refugees want to steal other people's jobs or are just being lazy.
Refugees are normal people with ambitions and dreams, many were doctors or engineers in their home country.
I loved my country, it was so beautiful before the war came.
I would never have left my country either, but we were forced to by the violence.
Yusra Mardini: It breaks my heart when I see what is currently happening in the world
Was there a specific moment that made you want to flee?
It was these entire five years in a war zone.
I've seen rockets, I've seen bombs.
I saw so much that I never should have seen as a child.
We lost our house, I had none of my things, we often hid under desks at school, and there was an explosion near the swimming pool.
At some point it was normal for bombs to hit.
You then hid for five minutes and continued walking until.
That was so sad.
I could no longer accept that I could lose my life here at any second.
Ukraine or Gaza, images of war are currently very present, how do you deal with them?
It breaks my heart when I see what is currently happening in the world.
I see people going through exactly what I had to go through.
This is so painful.
These are innocent citizens who are losing their home, their family, everything.
There is simply a lack of humanity.
Some of these people have nothing left.
We must try to empathize with them and welcome them.
Interview: Nico-Marius Schmitz