Twenty-nine athletes, who previously fled their home countries, were selected on Tuesday by the Tokyo Olympics to compete on a refugee team.
The group is set to compete in 12 sports after they were selected from an initial cluster of 55 International Olympic Committee refugee athlete scholarship holders, officials announced. The competitors will be represented by the Olympic flag and anthem when the games begin on July 23.
“The refugee athletes are an enrichment for all of us in the entire Olympic community,” IOC President Thomas Bach said during a virtual ceremony in Lausanne, Switzerland. “The reasons we created this team still exist. We have more forcibly displaced people in the world right now, and therefore, it went without saying that we wanted to create an IOC Refugee Olympic Team for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.”
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Chef de Mission Tegla Loroupe of the IOC Refugee Team said the group is representative of those fleeing their home countries around the world.
“The athletes represent not only themselves, not only the IOC, but also all refugees in the world,” Loroupe said. “Let’s bring solidarity, as we are solidarity people.”
“Our universal language is sport. Let’s go and bring joy,” she added.
The games mark the second time a refugee team was used after 10 asylum-seeker athletes competed in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Tokyo’s players will compete in weightlifting, wrestling, boxing, swimming, cycling, and judo, among other sports.
The Tokyo games were initially scheduled to commence between July and August 2020, though the competition was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. A vast majority, 80%, of the Japanese population have voiced their support in canceling the games this July following COVID-19 concerns.
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Government officials in Japan have sparred with the IOC as speculation continues to brew over whether or not they will be held. In May, the IOC vowed not to be swayed by public opinion and indicated the games were set to go ahead.
“We listen but won’t be guided by public opinion,” IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said, adding that “everything is telling us that the Games can go ahead and will go ahead.”
