After being evacuated from Taliban-held Kabul in dramatic circumstances, Afghan Paralympian Hossain Rasouli beat all the odds to compete in the long jump.
Hossain is primarily a sprinter but arrived too late for his event, the 100m T47. So, the organisers gave him a shot at the long jump event. He showed great character and agreed to compete. He practiced for just 90 minutes on Monday night before entering the highly completive long jump T47 class event, The Times of India reported.
AFP
Predictably, he finished in last place, but recorded a personal best distance of 4.46m as he took the applause of the competing athletes and delegates.
Hossain
might have been bewildered by the experience, but it’s understandable. He flew into the country on Saturday night with his teammate Zakia Khudadadi, after being smuggled out of Kabul in a covert operation.
In an international operation that included efforts on the part of Paralympics, Rasouli and Khudadadi were able to enter Kabul airport thanks to the assistance of the Australian military, which had a presence there.
AP
At first, it seemed their Paralympic dream was over. A Tokyo 2020 volunteer symbolically carried the Afghan flag during the Games opening ceremony, with no athletes on the ground to take part.
Over the weekend though, officials revealed the Afghan pair had been successfully flown out of the country.
After a stop in Dubai, they were taken to Paris and spent a week at the French sports ministry’s high-performance training centre before flying to Tokyo, where they arrived on Saturday evening.
The duo was excused from media duties, with the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) saying the athletes needed space to focus on their sport.
AP
IPC spokesman Craig Spence said he spoke to Rasouli on Monday but declined to share more information.
“He was super excited to be competing,” Spence said. “He had done long jump previously, but it was his first long jump in a major competition. It was a very special occasion. That’s as much as I’ll say.”
Meanwhile,
Zakia Khudadadi
will compete in the taekwondo event on Thursday.
Khudadadi is set to become the first female Afghan athlete to compete in the Paralympics since 2004. She will challenge in the women’s 44-49-kilogram weight category in taekwondo on Thursday.