(25 Apr 2016) As a swimming-mad teenager in Syria, Ibrahim Al-Hussein was glued to his TV set for the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Twelve years later in Athens, he has been selected among the tens of thousands of refugees in Greece to carry the Olympic flame in the Rio torch relay's Greek leg.
Al-Hussein lost part of his right leg to a bomb in 2012, during Syria's civil war that destroyed his city.
"I have been an athlete for 22 years, and tomorrow I feel I will have made it, reaching the actual Olympic Flame," Al-Hussein told The Associated Press on Monday after a training session in an Athens pool where some of the 2004 events were held.
The 27-year-old freestyle swimmer and basketball player will receive the flame from the head of Greece's Olympic Committee, Spyros Capralos, on Tuesday, at the Elaionas camp in Athens that is home to about 1,500 refugees and other migrants.
The International Olympic Committee said it's a symbolic gesture for the global refugee crisis, and is planning to let a group of 5-10 refugees compete at Rio, marching behind the Olympic flag.
Growing up in the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, on the River Euphrates, Al-Hussein was taught to swim at age 5 by his father, a swimming coach who will be watching his stint in the relay on TV, and three of his 13 siblings are also competitive swimmers.
Al-Hussein fled Syria to Turkey, and crossed from its coast to the eastern Greek island of Samos in early 2014, in a rubber dinghy that carried 16 people.
Unlike most other migrants, he chose to stay in financially-struggling Greece, seeking and receiving asylum there.
Al-Hussein has since found a home, a job and training facilities - he swims three times a week and plays basketball in a wheelchair five times a week with an Athens club - and has learnt to speak and read Greek.
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