THE STRENGTH OF SPORT

Quarantined in a Sydney hotel after the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, sports journalist Tracey Holmes was horrified to see the Taliban sweep over Afghanistan. From her makeshift office, she helped coordinate an impressive feat: freeing the country's female athletes. Here, she shares a powerful story of sport, community and freedom

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There are moments we all experience in life that leave us changed forever. In 2021, when the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, every single one of the more than 20 million Afghan women and girls became prisoners in their own homes. As I watched on, documenting what I could as a journalist, I became a conduit between female athletes wanting to flee and a group of incredible people who made it happen - human-rights lawyers, political operatives, security experts and others. Some of the women - the cricket and football teams - now call Australia home. But there are countless others whose stories we will never know because they have completely disappeared. They are the female athletes of Afghanistan. This is how I stumbled into their story.

"I feel so much pain, I feel angry, I feel devastated." That's the voice of Khalida Popal, the founder and former captain of the Afghanistan women’s football team. She lived under Taliban rule during the late 1990s but then, in the early 2000s, as she encouraged other girls to play football she received death threats from extremist and anti-women groups before fleeing to Denmark in 2011. If anyone knows the devastation that is now unfolding for the current generation of female athletes, it’s her.

It is August 16, 2021. I am quarantined at the Marriott Hotel at Circular Quay in Sydney. I am one of the lucky ones. In Afghanistan, all hell has broken loose.

I'd just flown home from the loneliest Games ever, the Covid-impacted Tokyo Olympics. Throughout, I'd been keeping one eye on the Taliban, reclaiming province after province from the tottering democratic government America and its allies were abandoning.