Yusra Mardini

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Yusra Mardini swim
Yusra Mardini portrait.png

Yusra Mardini 2016

Personal information
Surname: Yusra Mardini
Nation: SyriaSyria Syria
Society: Water lovers Spandau 04
Birthday: March 5, 1998
Size: 1.68 m
Weight: 53 kg
2016

Yusra Mardini ( Arabic يسرى مارديني, DMG Yusrạ̄ Mārdīnī ; * March 5, 1998 in Syria ) is a Syrian swimming athlete living in Germany . She fled Syria during the refugee crisis in Europe from 2015 and took part in the 2016 Summer Olympics for the Refugee Olympic Athletes team, which made her widely known.

youth

Mardini grew up in Darayya , a suburb of Damascus . Her father is a swim coach and started training her when she was three years old.

In 2012, at the age of 14, she took part in the World Short Course Championships in Istanbul and set a Syrian national record for the 400 m freestyle. A few months earlier, the family's home had been destroyed by artillery fire in the course of the civil war in Syria . After two of her swimming colleagues died and, among other things, the swimming pool was hit by a bomb, Mardini decided to leave Syria in 2015.

Escape to Germany

On August 12, 2015, Yusra Mardini and her older sister Sara - also a Syrian national swimmer - flew with their father's cousins ​​to Istanbul via Beirut and contacted a smuggler there. From Izmir they crossed the Aegean Sea to the Greek island of Lesvos , which is at least nine kilometers from the mainland, with another 18 in a rubber dinghy designed for seven people . During the crossing, the outboard motor failed and the overcrowded rubber dinghy threatened to sink. The two sisters and one or two other people who could swim pulled the boat with 18 occupants over several hours to the safe shore of the island of Lesbos. She finally came to Berlin via Hungary, Vienna and Munich via the Balkan route .

Sport, Olympia and UN

In Berlin, the sports club Wasserfreunde Spandau 04 noticed her by chance and let her train again for the first time after a long break. Since then she has competed for water enthusiasts. In October 2015, the association accepted her and her sister Sara in training groups and also supported them in other areas of life. During this time, coach Sven Spannekrebs was the sole contact for both of them.

In June 2016, the International Olympic Committee named Mardini as one of ten people who competed for the Olympic team of refugee athletes at the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro . She took part in the 100 m freestyle and 100 m butterfly competitions.

She won her prelim over 100 m butterfly with a time of 1: 09.21 minutes and thus reached 40th place. In the 100 m freestyle she finished 45th with a time of 1: 04.66 minutes.

Until the end of the Olympic Games, Mardini trained alone with Sven Spannekrebs. She has been training with Ariel Rodriguez since the 2016/2017 season. As a guest student, she attends the Poelchau Oberschule , an elite sports school in Berlin's Olympic Park .

At the end of April 2017, the United Nations (UNO) appointed Yusra Mardini as the new UN special envoy for refugees of the UNHCR refugee agency . It has been sponsored by Under Armor since October 2017 .

She and her compatriot Rami Anis participated in the 2017 Swimming World Championships in Budapest as a FINA team .

In May 2018 Mardini's biography Butterfly, which she had written together with Josie Le Blond, was published by Knaur- Verlag . The media had also previously reported that Stephen Daldry should film Mardini's life story. In August 2018, she left her association Wasserfreunde Spandau and Berlin to move to Hamburg . Since then she has been training at the Olympic base in Hamburg / Schleswig-Holstein .

In an interview, she reported that she would like to continue swimming as a competitive sport with the aim of qualifying for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo .

Records

  • Syrian national record in 400 m freestyle (short course) in 4: 56.66 min, December 14, 2012 in Istanbul.

Honors

  • In 2016 Mardini and her sister Sara received the Bambi in the category “Silent Heroes”; she herself presented the “Millennium Bambi” to Pope Francis in Rome .
  • Also in 2016 she received the “The Girls Award” of the Global Goal Awards 2016 from the United Nations Children's Fund
  • And TIME magazine listed her, like her 19-year-old US swimming colleague Katie Ledecky , in the list of the 30 most influential teenagers in 2016.
  • It won the Made For More Award in the Hero category on February 2, 2019.

Web links

Commons : Yusra Mardini  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Charly Wilder: She Swam to Escape Syria. Now She'll Swim in Rio. In: newyorktimes.com. August 1, 2016, accessed July 26, 2017 .
  2. ↑ 11th FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) - Results Summary
  3. ↑ a b Sven Spannekrebs: Yusra Mardini lives her Olympic dream with the water friends. (PDF) In: Newsletter February 2016. Wasserfreunde Spandau 04, accessed on December 7, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Lars Spannagel: Yusra Mardini: The lifeguard . In: Der Tagesspiegel . March 19, 2016 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Yusra Mardini on rio2016.com
  6. ↑ Results Women's 100m Butterfly ( Memento from August 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), rio2016.com
  7. ↑ Results Women's 100m Freestyle , rio2016.com
  8. ↑ deutschlandfunk.de , April 27, 2017, Ingo Bötig: From refugee team to UN ambassador (April 28, 2017)
  9. ↑ Yusra Maldini's Facebook page
  10. ↑ The girl who never gives up. July 25, 2017, accessed July 26, 2017 .
  11. ↑ DNB 1144208335
  12. ↑ David Crossland: Yusra Mardini: Syrian girl who swam to freedom sheds light on horror of refugee crisis in book. In: The National. April 7, 2018, accessed April 7, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Sebastian Kayser: Yusra Mardini goes to Hamburg. In: image . August 16, 2018, accessed January 12, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Alexander Josefowicz: Syrian swimmer Mardini wants to train in Hamburg. In: Hamburger Abendblatt . August 16, 2018, accessed January 12, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Olympic swimmer Yusra Mardini: "My aim is to correct the image that many people have of refugees" , Yusra Mardini in conversation with Jessica Sturmberg, broadcast on October 21, 2018 in the series Sport Talk on Deutschlandfunk
  16. ↑ Global Goals Awards honor champions for women's and girls' rights . In: UNICEF . ( unicef.org [accessed November 22, 2016]).
  17. ↑ The 30 Most Influential Teens of 2016 , In: TIME. 19th October 2016
personal data
SURNAME Mardini, Yusra
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Syrian swimmer
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1998
PLACE OF BIRTH Syria