Trying The Impossible

Let’s start off with the good news: Farhad, aka B-Boy Syko, from Afghanistan made it to Stage Two of Breaking for Gold, the qualifying for the  Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games. The video he submitted accrued quite a few likes by the community at large and was given the thumbs up by the judges. Watch it below!

From here, things get much more complicated. Syko is from Afghanistan but does not hold an Afghan passport – nor does he live in the Asian country. He spent the last few years in Sweden – as a refugee.

Only able to identify himself with a Swedish refugee card, he cannot travel outside of that country to enter the Continental Qualifier he is assigned to: based on the nationality he has provided, that would be the one in Taipei, TPE.

We don’t know how Syko’s story will play out in the end, but we all seem to remember that the International Olympic Committee had sanctioned a team of refugees to take part in the Rio 2016 Olympics. For the first time ever! The problems with the athletes’ refugee status and the lack of proper travel documents were solved then. Maybe it could serve as the precedent for refugee athletes making it to the BAYOG next year too? ­­­­­­The Breaking for Gold team tries to find out.

Published on 23 August 2017