Olympic Swimmer Yusra Mardini Returns to Syria ‘To Help My People Heal’
For the first time in a decade, Olympic swimmer Yusra Mardini returned this month to Syria, the country whose civil war she fled in 2015. Her journey away from her homeland, which led to two Olympic appearances with the Refugee Olympic Team, has been chronicled in the Netflix film, The Swimmers.
Mardni posted a video to social media on March 13 of her touring the pool in Damascus in which she used to train. (It’s the one that is struck by a missile during a practice session in the film.) She also toured the neighborhood of Darayya where she grew up, the block that housed her former childhood home reduced to rubble.
“It was very emotional for me,” Mardini said in an interview with Al Arabiya News. “I was in complete denial. It felt like I was dreaming. … I saw the sign, ‘Welcome to Syria,’ and immediately started crying. My mom was sitting next to me, it was also her first time back in 10 years.”
Mardini trained as a swimmer from a young age, representing Syria internationally in her early teens. Her home was destroyed in 2015, at which point she, sister Sarah Mardini and other family members decided to flee the country in an effort to reach Europe. Yusra, Sarah and two others used their swimming ability to push the dinghy they were traveling in to shore when its motor stopped in the middle of the Aegean Sea.
Mardini eventually settled in Germany, where she resumed training. She was a member of the Refugee Olympic Team for the 2016 Olympics in Rio and the 2021 Games in Tokyo, carrying the flag at the Opening Ceremonies of the latter. She retired from competitive swimming in 2023.
She has gone onto a long career as a humanitarian advocating for refugees, working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other international groups since she was 19 years old. She worked as a commentator for Eurosport at the 2024 Olympics. (Sarah has worked in refugee advocacy in Greece, activities that have brought her since resolved legal troubles.)
Yusra Mardini published an autobiography in 2018. The sisters’ story was turned into the 2022 biopic, The Swimmers, by Netflix. She launched an eponymous foundation to provide refugees with access to sports, education and other resources.
All of those things happened since the 27-year-old was last able to lay her eyes on her homeland. The fall of the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad in December 2024, an effort that various forces had been fighting for since 2011, opened the door for the release of political prisoners within the country and the return of millions of people in the Syrian diaspora like Mardini.
“So much has changed, yet it still feels like home,” she told Al Arabiya. “I never knew if I’d ever see this place again, and now, standing on this pool deck, I’m overwhelmed with emotions, gratitude, nostalgia, and pure joy. This pool shaped me, and today I get to be here again…I’m home.”
