Refugee Olympic team awarded prestigious Spanish prize

MADRID (AP) — The Olympic Refugee Foundation and the refugee Olympics team are the winners of this year’s Princess of Asturias Award for sports. The jury for the prizes organized by a Spanish foundation said the recipients’ work to help refugee athletes “merges the highest values of sport, such as integration, education, solidarity and humanity, and represents a message of hope for the world.” The International Olympic Committee and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees founded the refugee team so athletes forced by strife to leave their nations could still compete. The team first participated in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games with 10 athletes from Ethiopia, Congo, Syria and South Sudan.