From Refugee to Olympian

Yusra Mardini grew up in Damascus, Syria, swimming competitively since she was three years old. Her father was her coach. Her sister Sara was her training partner. The pool was their world. By her early teens, Yusra was one of the top young swimmers in Syria, with real potential for international competition.

Then the war came. A bomb hit their neighborhood and destroyed their family home. Another struck their swimming pool. Training became impossible. Going outside became dangerous. The Syria that Yusra knew was gone.

In August 2015, Yusra and Sara made the decision that millions of Syrians faced: leave everything behind. They traveled through Lebanon to Turkey, where smugglers loaded them onto an inflatable dinghy bound for the Greek island of Lesbos. The boat was designed for six or seven people. Twenty were crammed on board.

Thirty minutes into the crossing, the engine failed.

The boat began taking on water. Passengers panicked. Most couldn't swim. It was dark, the sea was rough, and the water was cold — around 18°C in September, warm enough to feel survivable but cold enough to kill through hypothermia if you stayed in long enough.

Yusra, Sara, and two other passengers who could swim made a decision that defined the rest of their lives. They jumped into the Aegean Sea, grabbed the ropes on the side of the dinghy, and started kicking.

For more than three hours they pushed. They treaded water in the open sea in the dark, fighting the current, keeping the boat moving toward shore. Yusra later said she thought about her swimming training the entire time — the breathing, the rhythm, the discipline of just keeping going when your body screams at you to stop.

All 20 passengers survived. They reached Lesbos. The swimmers crawled onto the beach, exhausted. Then they kept going — through Greece, through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, and finally to Berlin, Germany.

Within weeks of arriving in Berlin, Yusra found a swimming club — Wasserfreunde Spandau 04, one of Germany's top competitive clubs. She showed up with nothing: no gear, no times, no federation. Just the knowledge that she could swim, and the need to prove it still mattered.

Coach Sven Spannekrebs took her on. She trained relentlessly. Word of her story reached the International Olympic Committee, which was preparing something unprecedented: the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team for the 2016 Rio Games.

Yusra was selected as one of ten athletes. At 18 years old, less than a year after nearly drowning in the Aegean Sea, she walked into the Olympic stadium in Rio de Janeiro. She competed in the 100-meter butterfly — her signature stroke, and the title of the memoir she would later write. She won her heat. The crowd gave her a standing ovation.

In 2017, at the age of 19, she became the youngest-ever UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, traveling the world to advocate for the more than 100 million forcibly displaced people on Earth.

In 2018, she published her memoir, Butterfly, documenting the journey from Damascus to the Olympic pool.

At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (held in 2021), Yusra returned with the Refugee Olympic Team for her second Games. She competed again in the 100m butterfly and was given the honor of carrying the Olympic flag at the opening ceremony. In 2022, Netflix released The Swimmers, a feature film telling the story of Yusra and Sara, directed by Sally El Hosaini and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.