Fleeing Kabul, chasing gold - the story of a refugee Olympian

Mansouri was successful Tokyo, having mislaid successful nan past 16 successful nan +80kg class astatine nan Olympics, erstwhile a brother, who lives successful London, called him.

His sibling's connection was stark: “Don’t spell backmost to Afghanistan. I cognize everything will spell bad.”

A conjugation of overseas forces, led by nan USA and including nan UK, had been withdrawing from Afghanistan aft making a woody pinch nan Taliban, 2 decades aft removing nan hardline Islamist group from power.

While Mansouri was competing successful Tokyo, nan Taliban made accelerated territorial gains arsenic US troops pulled retired and reduced support for nan Afghan army.

Despite what he was hearing, Mansouri told his relative he was going home: “I’m carrying my flag. I will unrecorded successful Afghanistan until I'm safe.

“I person to spell to Afghanistan because if I spell to London, they would say, ‘oh, he was possibly carrying nan emblem conscionable for show'. But it's not for illustration that.

“I went to backmost to Afghanistan and aft 2 weeks nan business sewage very bad."

The Taliban took complete Kabul connected 15 August 2021, pinch nan superior descending into chaos. Fearing nan return of their fundamentalist rule, Afghans and foreigners rushed to find room connected flights retired of nan country.

Mansouri, who was 19 astatine nan time, said he quickly realised he needed to subordinate them.

“Embassies closed, everything closed,” he says. “I was thinking, really tin I transportation connected my athletics life? How tin I spell to different competition?

“So I discussed pinch my dada and my mum and I told them, ‘If you want to thief me, you person to spell extracurricular nan country’.”

With a begetter who worked pinch nan Afghan service and a relative who worked pinch Americans, location was a pressing logic beyond athletics for nan family to want to time off - nan consequence of reprisals.

Mansouri packed 2 mini bags, stuffing successful immoderate sporting kit he could. His mother, still recovering from a backmost operation, father, brother, sister and niece each decided to make nan journey.

“The business was very crazy,” Mansouri says. “Everyone was trying to get wrong nan airdrome and immoderate of them didn’t person documents, nothing. We were extracurricular nan airdrome 1 aliases 2 days.

“Children were crying and, arsenic possibly you saw successful nan news aliases connected TV, nan business was very bad.”

Television footage showed frantic scenes arsenic group ran connected to nan tarmac trying to get connected to planes and gunshots were fired into nan air.

Some group were reported to person died aft falling from nan underside of a level they were clinging to, while others were killed successful a crush extracurricular nan airport.

Mansouri and his family yet sewage connected a US removal flight, not knowing erstwhile they mightiness adjacent spot nan remainder of their relatives.

The time aft they landed successful nan United Arab Emirates, a termination explosive onslaught connected Kabul airdrome killed 170 civilians and 13 US soldiers.

Among those who mislaid their lives was Mansouri’s taekwondo team-mate Mohammed Jan Sultani.

Sultani, 25, had near his woman and 2 young children further backmost arsenic he tried to get nearer to nan gross and unafraid their transition retired nan of nan country. Unwittingly, he was moving person to nan blast that would termination him.

“I mislaid my friend, I was really adjacent pinch him,” says Mansouri. “I was really sad. He was besides trying to time off nan country. I was thinking, what’s going on?”

The US and its conjugation partners evacuated much than 123,000 civilians successful August 2021, pinch nan UK airlifting astir 15,000 Afghans and British nationals.

However, an enquiry by MPs successful 2022 recovered the UK's withdrawal from Afghanistan had been a "disaster" and that "mismanagement" of nan removal "likely costs lives".