PARIS (AP) — Having overcome so many hurdles, refugee athlete Hadi Tiranvalipour experienced immense disappointment Wednesday as his dream of winning an Olympic medal was cut short when he lost in a taekwondo qualification bout at the Paris Games.
Tiranvalipour, 26, was up against Omar Ismail of Palestine in the men’s under 58 kilograms competition and was handed a 2-0 loss in a lopsided match at the lavish Grand Palais venue on the first day of taekwondo events.
“I’m not satisfied with my performance, I don’t have an answer for this,” I said. “I wanted a good result, it’s not happening.”
Before making the IOC Refugee Olympic Team, Tiranvalipour fought for eight years as a member of the Iranian national team, winning the gold medal at the Asian Junior championship back in 2015.
But Tiranvalipour, who also worked as a TV presenter and studied sports science, was forced to leave his country after speaking out in favor of women’s rights, losing his job. In October 2022, he traveled to Turkey, then to Italy, where he lived in a forest for 10 days and then slept three months on a sofa in a shared accommodation that Iranian students had helped him find.
“Our journey is too difficult,” he said after his loss to Ismail. “Not for me, for all the refugee athletes. It’s too difficult for each of us to be here.”
Athletes from the refugee team compete under the same flag and come from different parts of the world. The team was created for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 as a symbol of hope and to call attention to the plight of refugees worldwide.
Another taekwondo specialist from the team, Dina Pouryounes Langeroudi, competed at the Grand Palais on Wednesday, losing in the last 16 in two rounds against Guo Qing of China in the women’s under 49 kilos. Langeroudi’s bid for a medal was not over yet, though, as she entered a repechage, but she was routed in two rounds by world champion Merve Dincel Kavurat of Turkey.
Taekwondo tournaments at the Olympics award two bronze medals, with the losing semifinalists taking on a couple of contestants who lost to finalists in the elimination phase.
The 32-year-old Langeroudi, who reached the No. 3 spot in the world rankings four years ago, also comes from Iran. She moved to the Netherlands in 2015 and had already made the refugee team for the Tokyo Games.
After training alone in a park, Tiranvalipour finally approached the Italian federation, which helped him apply for asylum and settle for good in the country. In the buildup to the Games, he trained at Olympic Sports Center in Rome with the likes of Vito Dell’Aquila, the Tokyo Olympic champion.
After missing out on Olympic qualification during European qualifiers in March, he was selected by the refugee Olympic team and had big expectations in Paris.
“I’m not satisfied because I had too much sacrifices about my losing weight process, my training. I’m really sad,” he said. “We passed so many difficult journeys. If you have a target, you have to keep going. Life is like this. I have to accept (my loss) and I have to think about the future.”
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