Emotional Afghans in Tokyo 'to fulfil dreams'

TOKYO • Afghanistan's two athletes made an "extremely emotional" arrival at the Tokyo Paralympic Village, Games chiefs said yesterday, after a top-secret flight from Paris following their evacuation from Kabul.

Zakia Khudadadi and Hossain Rasouli arrived in Japan ready to compete at the Games, after leaving Taleban-controlled Afghanistan last weekend in a "major global operation".

"Both athletes are here in Tokyo to fulfil their dreams, sending out a very strong message of hope to many others around the world," said International Paralympic Committee (IPC) spokesman Craig Spence.

Khudadadi and Rasouli were welcomed to the Athletes' Village on Saturday night by IPC chief Andrew Parsons and IPC Athletes' Council chairman Chelsey Gotell, as well as the Afghan team's chef de mission Arian Sadiqi.

"As you can imagine, the meeting was extremely emotional," said Spence. "There were lots of tears from everyone in the room. It really was a remarkable meeting."

Rumours of the whereabouts of the Afghan athletes spread all week. As recently as Saturday morning, when asked if there was still a chance they could travel to Tokyo, Spence said: "The door could be open, it could be closed, it could be half-open."

It has now been revealed that after evacuating from Afghanistan, the athletes spent a week in Paris training at the National Institute of Sport Expertise and Performance.

In a statement, the IPC thanked the efforts of "several governments, the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, Human Rights for All, the French Paralympic Committee, the British Paralympic Association, World Taekwondo" for bringing the athletes to Japan.

"Like all the athletes here at Tokyo 2020, we never gave up hope, and to now have Zakia and Hossain in the Paralympic Village alongside 4,403 other Paralympians shows the remarkable power of sport to bring people together in peace," Parsons said in a statement.

Sprinter Rasouli was scheduled to compete in the men's T47 100m but arrived too late for Saturday's heats. Instead, he will enter the T47 long jump final tomorrow.

Khudadadi will compete in the women's taekwondo -49kg category on Thursday, becoming the first Afghan woman to take part in the Paralympics since the 2004 Games in Athens, Greece. The sport is making its Paralympics debut.

Spence said the athletes' mental health and well-being was the IPC's "top priority".

"Every day we've checked in on primarily their mental health, because as you can imagine, the situation they've gone through in the last few days is a serious one," he said.

Spence said the two athletes would not speak to reporters while they were at the Games.

He said the organisers wanted to avoid "a selfie fest" with other athletes taking pictures in the village, but stressed that the pair would be allowed to mingle.

"We're not saying, 'You shouldn't just stay in your apartments and not go out'," he said.

"We're saying, once you've gone through your three-day quarantine, you need to fulfil this experience of being at the Athletes' Village'."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, NYTIMES