by Tom Little and Vincent Daheron

PARIS (Reuters) – Afghan para taekwondo athlete Zakia Khudadadi, who won the first medal in the history of the refugee team at the Paralympic Games on Thursday, said on Friday she hopes to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Games for France, where she has been exiled for three years.

“I hope that after this medal, I will be French for Los Angeles,” the 25-year-old athlete declared at a press conference, the day after her bronze medal in the under 47 kg K44 category.

Zakia Khudadadi fled Afghanistan in 2021 after the Taliban returned to power and was welcomed by France, where she applied for naturalization that was not accepted before the Paris Games. “I am proud to be in France,” she added.

In the minutes following his bronze medal, the flag of the refugee team and that of France shared the tatami of the Grand Palais.

“The refugee flag because it’s my team and France because it helped me with sport, it has always been behind me,” explained the 2023 European champion.

Although she did not speak a word of the language of her adopted country when she arrived, Zakia Khudadadi now gives interviews in French to the media.

“I live at INSEP (National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance, located in the Bois de Vincennes), I took French lessons every day there because I live there, I train there,” she told Reuters. “I communicated a lot with the whole French team, that’s how I progressed a lot.”

In four years, she hopes to participate in the Paralympic Games in Los Angeles under the French banner where she will aim for gold in para taekwondo and a second medal in a second discipline.

“I tried other sports at INSEP, either athletics or swimming,” she explained at a press conference. “Both are possible because I have good potential. I’m 25, I have time. Two medals in Los Angeles, that’s possible.”

“I think it will be athletics,” she later told Reuters.

(Reporting by Tom Little and Vincent Daheron, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)

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