From our Olympics correspondent in Paris – Fariba and Yulduz Hashimi fled Kabul after the city once again fell to the Taliban in 2021. Three years later, the sister cyclists are riding alongside one another in the 2024 Paris Olympics women’s road race on Sunday, proudly bearing the black, red and green Afghan tricolour torn down by the country’s new masters when they seized the capital.
It’s been a long road to Paris for the Hashimi sisters. Fariba and her sister Yulduz came to France as part of a team of six athletes who will be competing for Afghanistan in the 2024 Paris Olympics. The team is made up of three men and three women – a deliberate show of equality in the face of the Taliban’s fierce opposition to women’s involvement in professional sports. Since retaking power in 2021, Kabul’s new masters have sought to excise women from public life, restricting their access to school and higher education as well as the workplace.
