How refugee Dorsa Yavarivafa fled Iran for her love of badminton

Dorsa Yavarivafa, badminton player selected to represent the IOC Refugee Olympic Team in the Paris 2024 games, poses for portraits in London, Britain, May 21, 2024. REUTERS/Chris J. Ratcliffe

LONDON (Reuters) - On a rainy November morning in 2018, 15-year-old Dorsa Yavarivafa and her mother left Tehran for Turkey with fake German passports – the first thing she grabbed when she was told they were leaving at 4 a.m. was her badminton bag.

The pair flew a month later to Germany, then to Belgium and eventually to France. Yavarivafa would be jailed three times -- once entirely alone for a day, crying and taken from her mother -- before she made it to Birmingham, England at the end of 2019 and finally found a home.