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The Documentary Podcast

Yusra: Swim for Your Life

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2016

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The story Yusra Mardini, the teenage Syrian refugee who swam to survive, and was then selected to compete in the pool for the refugee team at the Olympic Games in Rio. Freelance journalist Magdalena Sodomkova travelled with Yusra, her sister and other refugees as they approached the Hungarian border, eventually making their way to Germany, and beginning a new life in Berlin.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

If I want to speak about the really really story I think I need I don't know 10 books Actually Actually when you are in the water you forget about everything.

0:17.0

It's my first home, not my second home.

0:24.0

Sometimes if I didn't train, I feel like I'm missing something, some part of my life.

0:32.0

The first time I met you I'm missing something some part of my life.

0:33.0

The first time I met Yisra, I had no idea she was a swimmer.

0:38.0

She was just one of many Syrian refugees trying to get to Germany. I could never have foreseen

0:46.7

but half a year later I would be watching her on stage at this press conference

0:52.3

in Berlin.

0:53.2

We want to send a message of hope for all refugees of the world.

1:01.1

And that she would be selected by the International Olympic Committee as one of just 10

1:07.1

members of the first ever refugee team to participate in the games in Rio de Janeiro.

1:13.0

They have no flag to march behind.

1:16.0

They have no national anthem to be played.

1:20.0

My name is Magdaleneasurumkova and as a freelance journalist I was covering the refugee crisis in Serbia at the end of August last year.

1:32.0

I first met Yisra and her sister Sarah walking on this railway track

1:37.0

leading northeast to Hungary. It was a total coincidence that of all the groups I could have asked to follow, I chose theirs, a party of 30 young Syrians and Iraqis.

1:51.0

Those 30 persons who was with me they really made me feel like what is real family

1:57.3

even if the situation was really really bad they make it really funny. I really love them. They made everything easy. I think sometimes

2:06.8

they are more than my own family. Further down to tracks there is a barbed wire fence, the Hungarian border.

2:15.0

There is a hole in the fence, used by thousands of people to cross the border to get to the European Union. Behind that fence, Hungarian

2:25.9

police are gathering the refugees, whoever they catch has to apply for asylum in

2:31.7

Hungary. But the Syrians don't want that. They want to get to

...

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