Lausanne, Switzerland, April 6, 2020: The International Olympic Committee celebrated the International Day of Sport for Peace and Development on Monday, April 6.
To highlight the mission, the IOC interviewed Farid Walizadeh, a 22-year-old boxer who fled Afghanistan as a child and is now settled in Lisbon, Portugal, and studying architecture.
As one of 48 IOC Refugee Athlete Scholarship-holders, Farid is hoping to be selected for the IOC Refugee Olympic Team at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Born in Afghanistan, Farid was separated from his family when he was just seven years old and left the war-torn country on foot.
He travelled stateless over the next few years through Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, spending time in prison and an orphanage before reaching the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Centre in Istanbul, where he first learned to box. He finally found refuge in Portugal in 2012.
Farid says: “When I was nine years old I was in a prison for travelling in an illegal way to Europe – and life was way harder. But even then, as a child, I was trying to see the positive sides of that.
“I was drawing and painting to try to pass the time because with every darkness there’s a light. Every day the night comes but the next day the light will come back.”
Farid says sport has changed his life because before that he had nothing – not even a dream.
“Sport gave me the hope and the power – mentally and physically – to dream, and to try again. I know that I’m going to fall down a lot of times, but I am going to stand up once again because of the power of my dream.”
He adds that boxing also gave him much-needed self-confidence.
“If you don’t have confidence you can’t do anything. For example, in the past, I couldn’t even speak with people because I was still so deeply inside my trauma. I couldn’t even say my name in school because I didn’t have that confidence.
“But, with boxing, I started to gain confidence because I started to have contact with people; I started to shout; I started to give all of that negative energy out to the punch bag. And that’s why boxing has had a big role in my life, because now I have my self-confidence – and I have my dreams.”
Farid has dreams beyond the Tokyo Olympics and boxing as he aims to complete his architecture course at university in Lisbon.
“It is hard work but I want to build from that so that I can design and create new things to replace those that have been destroyed by war in the country where I was born, and in other countries.”
For the full interview see: www.olympic.org