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Dreams Come True - A refugee vies for the Olympic Games

May 21, 2016

In an Olympic first, a 'Refugee Team' will compete at the Rio Summer Games. Judo master Yolande Mabika fled the civil war in Congo and has started a new life in Brazil.

https://p.dw.com/p/1IsAY
Bürgerentscheid zu Olympia in Kiel und Hamburg Grüne Ampel
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Rehder

Dreams Come True - A refugee vies for the Olympic Games

The International Olympic Comittee is creating a team of refugee Olympic athletes for the 2016 Rio Summer Games. Yolande Mabika will likely be on that team. After being separated from her family in the Congolese civil war, Yolande represented Congo at the Judo world championships in Brazil. She applied for asylum and began a new life, overcoming seemingly insurmountable problems. After much suffering, she gained support from friends and Brazil's national Judo Association. It provided meals, public transportion tickets to competitions and training clothing. Yolande dreams of participating in the olympics. And her greatest hope is that her family will see her on television...which might perhaps reunify her with her father and brothers.