'I hope my best wins gold': Iranian medallist defector eyes top spot in Taekwondo at Paris 2024

Kimia Alizadeh, a taekwondo athlete, was forced to flee the country and will now compete for Bulgaria in this years games, ITV News Sports Editor

Crowds line Tehran’s airport arrival hall, cheering and jostling to see the history maker. Some wave flags of the Islamic Republic. Kimia Alizadeh smiles and stops for selfies.

The shy looking teenager in a blue and white striped tracksuit and a black veil is mobbed by well-wishers. Alizadeh raises her Olympics medal to the cameras.

The previous week, in August 2016, the 18-year-old - who grew up in a modest suburb of Iran’s capital - had taken third place in taekwondo at the Rio Olympics.

As the first women to win an Olympic medal in the country’s history, Alizadeh is catapulted to national stardom. The Iranian president, no less, wished his 'daughter' "everlasting happiness".

Four years later, in July 2020, everything would change. Alizadeh announced on Instagram she had defected, citing the Iranian regime’s "hypocrisy, lies, injustice and flattery".

After fleeing Iran under the cover of a European holiday, she entered exile in Germany. "I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran who they’ve been playing with for years," she posted, beneath of a photo from the Rio Games.

"They took me wherever they wanted. I wore whatever they said. Every sentence they ordered me to say, I repeated. Whenever they saw fit, they exploited me."

Now, Alizadeh is poised to write another extraordinary chapter in her story. Four years have passed since she left Iran, and the 25-year-old has started a new life in the UK, where she is deep into training for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Having competed with the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2020 Tokyo Games, where she narrowly missed out on a podium place, she has accepted an offer of Bulgarian citizenship to allow her to compete for a national team.

Alizadeh will arrive in Paris this summer as the reigning European taekwondo champion tipped to win a gold medal.

"I am just doing my best, I want to enjoy every single second in the training, in the competition, and in the Olympics… and I hope my best wins the gold," she told ITV News.

Today, Alizadeh - who railed against being forced to wear the "obligatory veil" in Iran - wears her hair uncovered, as she spars with a partner in a gym in south London, under the eye of her coach, who she followed to the capital.

"It is an amazing feeling to achieve something that no one has ever achieved," she said, reflecting on her 2016 medal win.

"Sometimes there is something more important than sport, which is human rights, and I think that is why I said [then] I am not a history maker first. Being the right person, being who I believe, is more important than sport."

For now, though, this fighter is focused on her Olympic bouts. "You know, a gold medal in the Olympics is my main goal, I am waking up every day to train for it, [but] I am always doing my best for women around the world, and I hope they are motivated from this medal and this result."

She spoke as Iran grapples with the death of its president, but she is careful not to stray into politics, conscious, it seems, not to antagonise a regime known to harass dissidents.

"At the end of the day, I am a child of Iran, I am Iranian…I had to leave my country…but now this is my job, and I will do my best to represent my family and my friends around the world," she said.

Alizadeh may have fled the country of her birth, but she finds comfort in her new, adopted home.

"I am really comfortable in London, it’s similar to my city [Tehran], it is big and busy, it’s an alive city, I am really comfortable here," she said.

"You see lots of Iranian communities, who give me good vibes and attention, and I really love that, and it’s so special, it’s like I’m here in my home."

How does she feel about her status as a dissident, and a source of inspirational to women in Iran and around the world?

"That’s an honour, but from the other side it is a responsibility, as I say I am doing my best for the women, for the girls especially the young ones, who are watching me, fighting for them, and fighting for their rights to be honest, our rights to be honest."

Alizadeh is unlikely to take her next medal home to Iran, however she performs in Paris. But she hasn't given up hope of returning there, one day.

"All Iranians around the world hope we can go back'', she says. "We are really hoping it can happen… we are looking forward to seeing ourselves in Iran soon."

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