Spar trek

Her parents fled the Taliban, and settled across the border in Iran. As a refugee, Hamidi says she never felt she belonged, until she found taekwondo. Wins took her back to Kabul, where she hoped to compete on the national team. Then the Taliban took over again. Her family fled again. Now 23, she is battling hate mail, building a life in France, just won an award in Geneva, and is aiming for the Olympics

- Dipanjan Sinha

"As a 14-year-old, I was kicking away my worries for hours every day," says Marzieh Hamidi. "I forgot the world when I was at the gym.

At 23, the Afghani-Iranian taekwondo champion and women's rights advocate has turned the sport into a lifeline, a way to process discrimination, exile, death threats and her quest for freedom.

Two weeks ago, she was awarded the International Women's Rights Award by the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. Hamidi dedicated it to the women of Afghanistan and the protesters in Iran. She has lived on both sides of that border.

Hamidi's parents fled Afghanistan in 2000, to escape the Taliban regime, and sought refuge across the border in Iran. Marzieh was born there in November 2002, but grew up "feeling like an outsider, like someone who could never belong in Iran," she says.

Amid bullying at school followed by restricted access to colleges, because of her complicated citizenship status, home offered solace.

Her father found work in the security department of a factory; her mother was a homemaker. Together, they kept their five children's spirits up with card games, board games, and movies.

It was through cinema, in fact, that Hamidi discovered the world of women's sport.

Bollywood movies such as Mary Kom (2014), the biopic of the Olympic medal-winning Indian boxer, and Mardaani (2014), about a woman inspector with the Mumbai police opened her eyes to what was possible, she says.

The documentary series The Last Dance (2020) about basketball legend Michael Jordan, and the Afghani film Osama (2003), about the struggles of a girl in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, shaped her worldview.

She was 14 when she first tried taekwondo. "I had played other sports, like volleyball, but from the first day, it felt like this sport was just meant for me," she says.