Both of Yusra Mardini’s visits to Budapest have been because of swimming.

It assuredly was not the 200m freestyle or 100m butterfly that brought her here the first time.

Mardini’s first trip happened two years ago because she was able, with the help of her sister, to swim amid a boat of refugees from Turkey to Greece.

A native of Syria, now 19-year-old Mardini and her sister, Sarah, were escaping the war in their home country when the dinghy they had been smuggled into began to sink. The arduous trip across the Aegean Sea would have surely proven deadly for all the people in the craft if not for the Mardini sisters and their swimming.

“For a few minutes it was funny,” said Mardini, “but then I wanted to cry.”

She wasn’t sure she could swim long enough to pull the boat to safety.

Yet Mardini was a natural in the water. At 3, her father, a swim coach in Syria, taught her to swim.

In December 2012, before war forced her from her country, Mardini swam for Syria at the FINA short-course world championships in Turkey.

Two summers ago, as the salt water stung her eyes and sprayed into her mouth, she thought about those moments.

“I didn’t think about dying or that it was cold,” said Mardini. “I didn’t think about anything except I just remembered the events of my life passing through me.”

She safely pulled the boat into European waters and then made a 25-day overland trek to Germany, stopping in Budapest just as Hungary’s borders were closing. In the nation’s capital she slept in a train station and clashed with police.

“It was a really tough experience,” she said, remembering a sympathetic taxi driver who understood her situation and drove fast enough to help the sisters evade authorities.

“It was like a Hollywood movie how fast he was driving,” she said.

“I don’t know if he’ll ever remember me but I’m really thankful for this guy.”

She vowed one day to return to Hungary under different circumstances. This week, that moment arrived. It was swimming, again, that brought her back.

“They told me that the world championships would be in Budapest,” she said. “I was really shocked.”

Despite fighting a cold earlier in the week, Mardini swam both her events — finishing with a 2:15.80 in the 200m freestyle and a 1:07.99 in the 100m butterfly. Her butterfly fly time is more than a second better than her performance in Rio last year.

 

Her coach, Ariel Rodriguez, said her results were very good considering her cold:

“I’m happy to finish the season like that and with these results.”

Rodriguez began coaching Mardini after the Rio Olympics, where she competed as part of the Refugee Team.

Mardini and another Syrian swimmer, Rami Anis, are competing in Budapest as “Independent FINA Athletes”.

This means that Mardini is able to continue to pursue the sport she loves while living in Germany.

She’s now looking forward to Tokyo 2020, with her new swim club and family supporting her toward that goal.

“A lot of people who supported me were from my club,” she said, inadvertently showcasing how sport can create communities outside of competition.

“They offered me a place to stay the first months I came to Germany.”

Her first coach in Germany, Sven Spannekrebs, now travels with Mardini, helping her focus on her personal and athletic goals — she has a book coming out and has optioned the story of her life to Working Title Films. But for the team around Mardini, the focus is still on the swimming.

“When we started it was just the technical foundation,” said Spannekrebs, thinking back to the first time he saw Mardini in the pool.

“After a few months we saw that she was becoming better and better and better. Now she’s at a good level that we can build up in the next months and toward Tokyo,” he said.

“From now until at least Tokyo,” Mardini said, “I’m going to keep swimming.”

She is also careful to point out that she is a competitor and athlete, just like all the other swimmers in Budapest this week.

 

No matter how they got here. “I’m trying,” she said, “as a normal person and a refugee, to show people that I’m a normal person who has dreams and passion.

I’m still trying to be proud, and to show people that I never gave up.”