Determined to overcome himself: this is how Hadi Tiravanlipour, one of the two athletes living in Italy who will be part of the Olympic Refugee Team, is preparing for Paris 2024.
He arrived in Rome from Iran in 2022, via Turkey: ‘The situation is complicated. But it’s my country and don’t want to talk bad about it. I was a TV presenter there and I supported women’s freedom in the tv show. Since that day they have not called me back,’ says Tiravanlipour.
He has been training at the Giulio Onesti centre of the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) in Rome and will par- ticipate in taekwondo competitions in the 58 kg category, the same as Tokyo Olympic gold medalist Vito Dell’Aquila in 2021.
Hadi does not like to talk about his past but emphasizes that it was difficult: ‘In Iran I had many medals. I was champion in several competitions. Then I arrived here with nothing. It is very difficult for one person to bear. I always told myself that I had to be patient and that good days would come,’ he says.
Before leaving, he enrolled at the University of Tor Vergata: ‘I thought it was a good idea to continue with my education. It was also the easiest way to get a VISA student’.
There are many Iranian people who have come to Italy to study and so Hadi de- cides to ask them for help: ‘I brought some money but I had to manage it well at first. When I arrived, I was in the woods for ten days. Then I asked these students if they could help me and they found me a place to sleep. I didn’t ask for any information; I just took my stuffs and went. We were ten people in a small room’.
After the first eight months in Italy, Hadi kept thinking about taekwondo: ‘I knew there were many good athletes in Italy but I didn’t know anything’. So, he decided to write an e-mail to the Italian federation: ‘I said to myself “Hadi, you have to take the opportunity” and went in person to their headquarters. They had not received the email but, when they got to know my story, they immediately helped me,’ he says, thanking the FITA president and sports minister, Andrea Abodi.
The Olympics were always a dream, which Italy allowed him to make it come true: ‘People were very kind to me. My Italian coaches and colleagues encouraged me and so I applied. During the qualifications I won the first match but lost the second. From that moment I became demotivated and only thought about what I could do, I even asked my psychologist. He told me that answers sometimes don’t come in a day but in three months or ten years. Mine, in the end, came after one month’.
Specifically on 2 May 2024, when the International Olympic Committee infor- med him that he was among the thirty-six athletes on the refugee team: ‘I started crying because I remembered what I had sacrificed. I lost my country, my flag and my home. Since I arrived in Italy, I have trained every day with the Italian team, even twice a day. I spent weekends or Christmas in the gym’.
The first person Hadi called was his mother, whom he hasn’t hugged in two years: ‘I have a close relationship with her, she told me I have to call her every day, even for a minute. This is the only thing I regret: I have lost my family and I don’t know if I will be able to visit them again. Whenever I am tired, I think about what they did for me”.
Hadi wants to make the most of this opportunity: ‘I don’t just think about medals, because it puts pressure on me. My goal is to beat myself more and more every day. ‘Piano piano, as they say in Italy. I am not just a refugee athlete; I want to repre- sent all the 110 million displaced people in the world and also all Iranians.’
Hadi loves Italy ‘madly’ but also thinks about Iran: ‘I miss my country. Just the other day I was thinking ‘If I win the gold medal, which flag will I have to wave?
