Inspirational Athletes
Inspiring resilient athletes
An amazing story of resilience this month, comes from the Afganistan girls’ football team. The girls were too vulnerable and in immense danger in their home country, which was recently taken over by a group called the Taliban. The Taliban wouldn’t allow girls to play sport (or even go to school), which we can all agree, is outrageous, and totally unfair.
Imagine being in a country where they don’t allow sport or education, it makes me feel very fortunate to have grown up safely in England and had lots of opportunities to try different sports. I think we all sometimes need a reality check, to remind us to feel grateful for the enormous privilege that we have.
The girls have been so brave throughout the ordeal. After going into hiding from the Taliban in Afganistan, they were then offered a month of asylum in Pakistan (asylum means a safe place to live for people fleeing their own country) , before travelling to another country far, far away in order to safely play their sport and pursue their dreams.
The country they’ve come to is England! All the girls and their families were kindly offered support, new homes, new schools and new football teams with Leeds AFC development squads. It was an amazing international operation to help the girls find a safe place to play sport, and hopefully now they will all feel happy and safe to play the sport that they love, despite being very far from home.
The Afganistan girls’ football team are a great inspiration and reminder to us to be brave, strong and resilient, in the face of tough challenges, and that staying together as a team, can make scary and overwhelming circumstances a lot easier to face and overcome.
For more inspiration, check out these amazingly resilient athletes and sporting superstars...
Fran Kirby
Fran Kirby, who many consider amongst the greatest female football players of all time, is a fantastic example of amazing resilience. Fran demonstrated huge mental strength to overcome numerous hurdles and massive challenges early in her football career. She kept playing football following bereavement of her mum when she was just 14years old, which must have been so so hard.
Fran endured months of depression, illness and injury in her early career, even overcoming a potentially life threatening condition called pericarditus (see youtube link). However, like a true champion, she used these set-backs to spur her on, to become even stronger and an even better player.
Fran plays striker for England and Chelsea, and some refer to her as the “female Messi*” due to her silky skills and speed. Fran has achieved greatness in the Champions League, Premiership, Olympics, World Cups and will be going to the Euros in 2022 this summer in England! She is Chelsea’s all time leading goalscorer, last week she scored her 100th goal! What a superstar!
Tom Daly is another fantastic role model who demonstrated huge resilience from a very young age. Tom was selected for the GB squad for diving in the London 2012 Olympics, aged just 14!
As sometimes happens to elite superstars, Tom was bullied at school (probably because other people were jealous of his achievements). The bullying was evidently very tough for Tom to endure, but he came through it, and even spoke out about the bullying he suffered to the media to raise awareness, and to promote Childline (a free service where young people can ring for support).
Tom proved that he had the mental strength of an Olympian by rising above all of the abuse and bullying, to become a world class athlete, achieving so much success and multiple Olympic medals and world championship victories. He has inspired new generations of athletes to start diving, and to reach their athletic potential.....and he even made knitting cool in the Tokyo Olympics!
Tom has his own instagram page :@knittedwithlovebytomdaly in which he posts pictures of his knitted products. Tom auctioned his GB Olympics cardigan and raised huge funds for Brain Tumour research, in memory of his Dad. What an amazing, inspirational athlete. It’s great to see people using their sporting success for good causes and to help others.
A really inspiring sports documentary to watch is called “Rising Phoenix” and shows the stories of many paralympic athletes, such as an athlete who gets injured in a landmine (a bomb that go off when they are stepped on) and goes on to compete in amputee events, and a fencer called who continued to fence despite losing her limbs. Watching paralympians is massively humbling, and makes me really appreciate having full use of my body.
