Syria's 'refugee' swimmer splashes her way to stardom

Bombs in the pool

Mardini, who at 18 swam in the 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly, now has her sights on the Tokyo 2020 Games.

In Germany, where she lives with her parents and sister, she trains for 30 hours a week in the pool and the gym.

It is a far cry from her life in Syria, where even during training there was no escape from the war.

"Sometimes you're swimming and a bomb comes in the pool, so you have to run out and go hide. It wasn't just once, it was three or four times. It was horrific," Mardini said.

Mardini was a keen swimmer from a young age, but her dream of becoming a professional athlete came to a grinding halt when the Syrian war broke out in 2011.

She left her home in the war-ravaged capital of Damascus in 2015 and headed to Turkey with her sister Sara.

One evening, the pair boarded a dinghy on the Turkish coast along with 20 others - three times more people than it was designed to carry.

As the overcrowded boat made its way towards Greece, it started to sink.

With no other choice, Mardini and her sister, also a strong swimmer, along with two other refugees jumped into the sea and dragged the small vessel for more than three hours to the Greek island of Lesbos.

"I was trying to be positive and I was praying with everyone. It was really hard," Mardini said.

"Me and my sister thought the same thing, that we are both swimmers and it would be a shame if we died there."

After reaching Greece, Mardini and her sister weaved their way through central Europe before arriving in Berlin in 2015, joining more than a million refugees who streamed into Europe that year, fleeing conflicts and political turmoil.

Memories of that journey will always remain with her, she said.

"It is like carrying a huge bag with rocks on your back. But also, you can't get rid of them because they made who you are now," she said.

Mardini hopes her memoir Butterfly, which will be released in May and is named after her strongest stroke, will inspire others.

"A lot of people think refugees are poor, or that they wanted to do this trip (to Europe). But those people went out of their country because there was a lot of violence," she said.

"I want to change people's perception of what a refugee is. I'm going to keep supporting and fighting for refugees."

Reuters