Everything for wrestling: Sarina Salehi's Olympic dream

Sarina Salehi knows what she wants — her determination is clear in every word she utters.

"I want to become a world champion and win a medal at the Olympics," she tells DW. Salehi's words are all the more remarkable because the young wrestler is just 14 years old. Salehi knows though, that words alone are useless in combat sport. What counts is the effort and the sweat that drops onto the wrestling mat.

Salehi now trains six times a week in Krefeld, near Düsseldorf, focusing on strength, conditioning and technique.

"Leg attacks and spins" are her specialty, she reports. She recently used them to defeat the reigning European champion in her age group. Nevertheless, her sporting future is uncertain. As an Iranian wrestler, she is caught between two worlds.

Escape from Iran

Salehi grew up in Baneh in northwestern Iran, part of the country's Kurdish minority. Her father Soran is a successful wrestler himself and his daughter also discovered that same passion early on.

"However, freestyle wrestling is forbidden to girls and women in Iran because of the veil requirement," Salehi's father explains.

And so, Salehi switched to karate and won the western Iranian championships in her age group. But she is not allowed to wrestle, which spurs her parents' decision to travel to Greece via Turkey in 2019 and apply for asylum in the European Union.

On the balcony of her Greek home, Salehi trained with her father. For the first time, she was able to pursue her sport at a club. "When I first saw the wrestling mats in a hall, I was totally fascinated," Salehi says.

It's a fascination shared by many women and girls in Iran, but for whom an Olympic career in wrestling remains blocked. Only after long pressure in 2015, did the regime in Tehran allow the discipline "Alish", so-called belt wrestling, in which athletes compete against each other in full-body suits and is mainly practiced in Muslim countries.

In 2019, Iran's national women's team won the world championships at their first attempt and has been cleaning up internationally ever since.

Rasul Khadem, president of the Iranian Wrestling Federation at the time, commented on the success: "Wrestling is much more than just wrestling for Iranian women. It is the resistance and struggle against unteachable attitudes. The success of Iranian women wrestlers despite their fledgling activity in this sport is a loud cry with the message: 'We can, we can, we can!'" A short time later, Kahdem lost his post.

For Mehdi Jafari Gorzini, a board member at ASV Mainz 88, a wrestling club in Mainz that is the current German team champion, discrimination against women can be seen in the highly popular sport of wrestling in Iran. The politician and publicist once fled the Islamic republic himself.

"The permission for 'Alish' only serves as an evasive maneuver to calm down the violent protests in the country a bit," Gorzini tells DW.

High hurdles for Salehi

Sarina Salehi has followed what's happening in Iran, the ongoing protests as well as the treatment of women in wrestling.

"I see a lot of what's happening there. It makes you really sad. The situation in Iran is not good," she says.

At the same time, Salehi is fighting for her own dream in Germany. "It's difficult for her and for us," says Hans-Georg Focken, her coach in Krefeld. "She has no chance to compete for Iran. And because she doesn't have a German passport, I can't get her into one of the local selection squads."

It's a dilemma. Salehi has already had success at international tournaments, but she is not eligible to compete in German championships, nor in European or world championships.

"The refugee team, which is supported by the DOSB (German Olympic Sports Confederation), would be a possibility," Focken says. But he believes it would be extremely difficult for Salehi to make the team, and also that her youth counts against her.

But female wrestlers are tough. With her family having been given permission to remain in Germany for now, Salehi hopes that German citizenship will soon follow. Then nothing would stand in the way of her athletic career beyond the mat. In the meantime, she also wants to continue learning.

"In terms of ambition and her physicality, she is top," says Focken. "But fundamental things are still missing, such as the cleverness of how to dictate and win a fight against different opponents."

To improve further, the 14-year-old is in the best hands in Krefeld. After all, Aline Rotter-Focken, the coach's daughter, was the first German to win Olympic gold in wrestling in Tokyo in 2021.

The club is striving to give Salehi the foundation for a similar career. She herself would like to pay it back someday. With performance and - if it all works out - with precious metal.

This article was translated from German by Jonathan Harding.