The 2022 Princess of Asturias Award for Sport went to the Olympic Foundation for Refugees and the Refugee Olympic Team
The jury highlighted the work for the benefit of integration, education, solidarity and humanity
King Felipe VI, in his speech at the 2022 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports award ceremony to the Refugee Olympic Foundation and the Refugee Olympic Teamhas called for solidarity so that the athletes who have had to leave their countries can “recover their personal ambitions” and “resume their activity in decent conditions” as well as participate in sports competitions.
“The word refugee is one of those terms that provokes deep despair in the listener,” the king stated in his speech at the Campoamor theater in Oviedo, in which he indicated that the Foundation and the Refugee Olympic Team recall that sport, top competition and the Olympic movement “serve to remember, reflect and palliate, as far as possible, the harsh reality that so many people in the world live”.
Felipe VI has affirmed that the refugees “they have lost everything” forced to leave their homes, their countries, their lives, for reasons “out of their control and always in dramatic circumstances, even endangering their lives”.
The king wished “every success” to the Venezuelan boxer Eldric Sella and the Afghan cyclist Masomah Ali Zada, the two athletes who competed with the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and participated this afternoon in the ceremony together with the president. of the IOC, Thomas Bachwhom he congratulated for “his support, leadership and drive”.
In her speech, Princess Leonor has indicated that she is “very concerned” that an athlete cannot train and progress in his career because he has been forced to flee his country, for what he has considered a “great initiative”that the athletes have the opportunity to continue their activity in order to compete in the Olympic Games.
The jury in charge of awarding the award has valued the Foundation and the Refugee Olympic Team for the opportunity it offers athletes in conflict zones and in places where human rights are violated to develop sports and personal activities, as well as their work for the benefit of integration, education, solidarity and humanity, which represents a message of hope for the world.
Although it was born with a vocation to disappear, the team had ten athletes in Rio 2016 in its first Olympic event but the vicissitudes of international politics prolonged its existence until Tokyo 2020 with twenty-nine athletes and the IOC has already announced that there will be a refugee team in Paris 2024 and also at the Dakar 2026 Youth Games.
The twenty-nine athletes of the Refugee Olympic Team who competed in Tokyo 2020, represented by the Olympic flag, belonged to thirteen national committees and did so in twelve disciplines.
The Refugee Olympic Team was created by the IOC in 2015, when it asked the different national committees to identify, in collaboration with UNHCR, refugee athletes whose sporting level had the potential to qualify for the Games, in order to offer them the possibility of doing so through funding provided by Olympic Solidarity scholarships. Two years later, in 2017, established the Olympic Refugee Foundation with the commitment to support the protection and sports and personal development of displaced athletes, beyond the Olympic events.
Proposed by the Vice President of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch Salisachs, the candidacy of the Foundation and the Refugee Olympic Team takes over the Princess of Sports Award from the swimmer Teresa Perales, the most successful Paralympian in history, winner of 27 medals in five games.
In the 2022 edition, twenty-four candidates from ten nationalities competed for the award, including those of the athlete Allyson Felix, the gymnast Simone Biles, the motorcyclists Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez and badminton player Carolina Marín.
In previous editions, the award has gone to, among others, the American skier Lindsey Vonn; the New Zealand men’s rugby team; the triathlete Javier Gómez Noya, brothers and basketball players Pau and Marc Gasol; the New York Marathon, the Spanish soccer team, the tennis player Rafa Nadal or the Formula One drivers Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.