From our Olympics correspondent in Paris – Palestinian athlete Omar Ismail was beaten in the last 16 of the men's flyweight taekwondo Wednesday, ending the 18-year-old's hopes of winning gold at the Paris Olympics. Fighters from Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia took to the mat in the Grand Palais, with two athletes from the Refugee Olympic Team also testing their mettle early in the day.
There’s a painting in Paris’s Musée du Louvre that shows a group of shepherds huddled around a pile of stones half-swallowed by green and growing things. The sunlight plays on their bare shoulders, and their heads are crowned with leaves. One man kneels down to trace the faded inscription with curious fingers. It’s a tomb. Death, the work’s title tells us, is here, too – even in Arcadia.
At the other end of the Tuilleries Gardens in the gaping hall of the Grand Palais, it’s hard not to be reminded that there’s another world beyond the joy and adrenaline of the Olympics. Of the more than a dozen athletes who step into the eight-sided ring on Wednesday for the men and women’s flyweight taekwondo competition, three are flying the flag of no country at all. Two of them, refugees from Iran, are competing as part of the Refugee Olympic Team, representing tens of millions of asylum seekers scattered across the world.
The third, Russian national Georgiy Gurtsiev, has only been allowed to compete as an Individual Neutral Athlete, with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) having banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from fighting under their countries’ flags following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. If he wins a medal today, a jade flag will be raised and a wordless anthem sung.
Nor are the two refugee Olympians the only exiles to walk into the ring on Wednesday. Competing under the Palestinian flag, Omar Yaser Ismail was born in the United Arab Emirates to parents from Jenin in the Occupied West Bank. At 18 years old, he is the first Palestinian athlete to qualify for any combat sport at the Olympics. Speaking to reporters ahead of the fights, he said that there was more at stake than whether or not he would be walking away with a medal that day.
“All of this, it’s for Palestine,” he said. “It’s true that we’re competing and fighting, but the real heroes are the children of Palestine and the children of Gaza.”
His first match of the day brings him face to face with Hadi Tiranvalipour, one of the two fighters from the refugee team. Tiranvalipour competed for eight years as a member of Iran’s national taekwondo team, working as a TV presenter outside of the octagon.
It was this work that put him on the path to exile. Tiranvalipour lost his job after speaking out in support of women’s rights during the widespread protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini. Amini died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for wearing her headscarf “improperly”, prompting mass demonstrations across the Islamic Republic.
As the government cracked down on the protests Tiranvalipour left Iran for Turkey, finally making his way to Italy, where he says he lived in a forest for ten days until some Iranian students found him a sofa to sleep on. After reaching out to the Italian Taekwondo Federation, he managed to win a place among the 36 athletes who would be competing in the Paris Olympics under the flag of the Refugee Olympic Team.
He fights well, but Ismail has him outmatched. He loses the qualification round 2-0. Speaking after the fight, he said he was disappointed in his performance, but proud of his opponent.
“I respect all the athletes of the world, especially the Palestinians,” he said. “We’re brothers, I have no problem with him. I was really happy for him, and I respect all the athletes of the world. I’m proud of him, because I know that he’s also in a difficult situation.”
Still, he said, it had been a hard road to walk.
“Our journey is too difficult,” he said. “Not for me, for all the refugee athletes. It’s too difficult for each of us to be here.”
Looking down the lineup for the round of 16, it’s difficult not to feel a certain apprehension. One of the first fights in the women’s competition will pit Israel’s Avishag Semberg against Saudi athlete Dunya Abutaleb, with the winner potentially going on to fight Mobina Nematzadeh, competing under the Iranian flag.
Depending on how these next matches pan out, Nematzadeh could also find herself in the ring against Dina Pouryounes Langeroudi, the second refugee from Iran fighting that day.
Pouryounes fled Iran for the Netherlands in 2015, and she was still living in an asylum seeker centre when she won her first international medal at the Polish Open in September that year. Just six years later, she competed in Tokyo as part of the Refugee Olympic Team, having won an IOC scholarship giving her additional funds and training support.
One by one, the fighters stride out onto the mat to bow to their opponent. Padded greaves, padded gauntlets, padded breastplate and helm – these athletes are dressed for battle. Beneath the austere rituals that accompany the fight, the rules seem simple enough: blows to the body score points. Kicks to the head score more.
More than once, a fighter falls to the mat, clutching themselves in agony. Often, these hurts seem self-inflicted – a kick connects awkwardly, and bone meets bone. The medics hurry over to kneel at their side, as if in supplication. After a few minutes, they’re back on their feet, ready to trade blows once more.
Pouryounes falls to China's Guo Qing early in the day. It's an unlucky match-up – the Chinese fighter goes on to sweep aside everyone in her path, finally falling 2-1 against Thai defending champion Panipak Wongpattanakit, who secures the gold.
Saudi Arabia's Abutaleb fares better, triumphing over Israeli fighter Semberg in a frenzied 2-1 bout. The crowd is fearsome – a thick block of green-clad Saudi supporters chant Dunya's name non-stop in the face of frantic Israeli flags from the far side of the room.
She soon meets her match. The Saudi flag-bearer falls before Iran's Nematzadeh in the bronze medal match A, missing out on her chance to make history by being the first Saudi woman to win an Olympic medal.
When Ismail walks into the ring for his second match, he sees Spain’s Adrian Vicente Yunta staring back at him. They move around the mat like wading birds, their long legs twisting, hooking, catching at each other's faces.
Ismail is struggling. Before the first round is out, it's clear that the Spaniard has him outclassed. When the fight is over, he drops to the mat, distraught, his face in his hands. He strides past the waiting journalists without a word, his face stricken, his boyish curls heavy with sweat. All through the crowd, his supporters are still chanting his name, their flags held high.
