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A torn ligament. A broken bone. A collision that ended everything they'd worked toward. For most athletes, a career-ending injury is just a tragedy. For a handful of remarkable people, it turned out to be the beginning of their most important work.
Getting cut. Being told you're too slow, too small, or too broken to compete. For most athletes, that's the end of the story. For these five, it was the beginning of the most important chapter. What they share isn't just grit — it's something more specific, and more instructive, than that.
They arrived in Rio carrying no national anthem, no flag of their own, and years of loss that most Olympic athletes couldn't imagine. The story of the first Refugee Olympic Team isn't just about sport — it's about what human beings are capable of when someone finally decides to believe in them.