Growing up in Aleppo, Syria with his family, Alaa Masoo found the swimming pool in his early years. He credits his father for this start in sports.

With his training pool damaged and the pressure of the conflict across Syria escalating, Masoo left the country in 2015. After a long journey across Europe, he settled in Germany where he returned to school and resumed training with the retired Azerbaijani swimmer Emil Guliyev.

With the World Aquatics Refugee Team member in his final weeks of preparation for the World Aquatics Championships – Fukuoka 2023, we check in with the 23-year-old.

As a swimmer, water is your world. How did you first get started in the sport, and when did you first start thinking, planning and training to one day compete on the global stage?

My story with swimming started way long ago. My father is a former swimmer. And after he retired from his job, he became a swimming teacher, so he started teaching me swimming by the age of four. I joined my first club three years later. And then two years later at the age of nine, I had my first competition. By the age of 10, I set my first age-group national record. This record still stands today.

Unfortunately, the war started in 2011 when I was 11. I wasn’t able to train between 2011 and late 2015. However, after I left my country, I was able to pursue my dream of swimming very quickly thanks to the Dutch and Germans. In 2018, I had a very successful year and in 2019 I got an IOC scholarship which allowed me to focus a lot on my training.  I basically focused only on swimming, but it all paid off as I competed at the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021. Thanks to World Aquatics, I was also able to compete at my first World Swimming Championships in Abu Dhabi that same year.

Sometimes your purpose in life is way bigger than you imagined. When you were forced from the borders of Syria, did you always believe that swimming competitively would still be a driving force in your life?

Thanks to swimming, I was able to release a lot of negative energy outside of me. For example, when I was in Syria during the war, only sport was the thing that was able to get me out of that atmosphere. Even though we weren’t able to train with continuity, I always used to be happy to go to training once or twice a week. It always depended on how dangerous it was to go.

However, when I saw that the IOC formed a team that is able to compete at world-level competitions, I was filled with hope again and I really wanted to give it a shot so in late 2019. I applied for the scholarship programme and I eventually ended up getting it. This gave additional life to my swimming career. From here, World Aquatics gave me the possibility to race at a world-class level. It has always been a motivation to try and get to that level.

After leaving Syria, you ended up in Germany? What was the community support like there? When and where did you pick back up on your training?

At the start of my refugee journey, my plan was to go to the Netherlands. Unfortunately, because of a mistake made while crossing Germany, we had to go back to Germany after eight months in the Netherlands.

When I left Syria, the first thing I made sure to take with me was my swimming briefs and my goggles. Two months after arriving in the Netherlands, I had a team to train with.

When I got to Germany, things went quicker. I was able to race at the national competitions and I was advancing smoothly. I had so much fun training with very supportive guys around me and every time I got faster. They were always there cheering for me which, of course, gave me a boost to go harder.

As a member of the World Aquatics Refuge Team, what does this mean to you with the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka on the near horizon?  

Being part of the World Aquatics Refugee Team is a great responsibility as we are representing World Aquatics and its core values. We also are representing the 110 million refugees in the world. 

How has being a part of the Refugee Team helped you in following your hopes and dreams in the pool?

As an athlete, you work hard and constantly because you love what you do. When you don’t have the ability to show your quality, it's disappointing.  Thanks to the solidarity of World Aquatics, and every other International Federation, which gives displaced athletes the chance to compete at such high-level contests. I know that every athlete feels thankful to everybody who works to support refugee athletes around the world.

The story of hope that refugee athletes like yourself embody is still being written. With World Refugee Day today, what do you hope people take away from your journey?

From my journey, I would like people to know that if you have a dream - no matter how hard it seems and no matter how many obstacles are out there - when you believe in yourself, give it your all, and love what you do, always pays off. As the saying goes, it’s not about the destination it’s all about the journey.