When Manizha Talash saw a video of an Afghan breakdancer on social media in 2020, she didn’t believe it at first. But that moment ended up changing her life, unlocking new possibilities and dreams for the 17-year-old living in Kabul.

Three months later, Talash had summoned the courage to visit the gym where the breakdancers, known as the Superiors Crew, trained, hoping to learn from the person she had seen spinning on his head in the video.

“There were 55 boys, and I was only a girl,” Talash explained. At first, she was hesitant to do anything more than watch the dancers, but as she got to know the breaking community, her concerns disappeared – and her determination to pursue the sport increased.

“In that gym, gender was not important,” she recalled, speaking fondly of the Superiors Crew. “At school or in my family, they always told me, ‘You’re a girl. You can’t do that thing, or that sport, or that job,” she said confidently in perfect Spanish, a language she learned after finding safety in Spain in 2021. “But within that gym, they always told me, ‘You can do it. It is not impossible. It is difficult, but it is not impossible.’”

So she got to work, mastering power moves in training and unlocking a wider understanding of hip-hop culture, as well as her place within this dynamic art form. She did this under the watchful eye of her first coach Jawad Sezdah — the very dancer she saw in the online video that ignited her passion in the first place.

Four years later, she is now Afghanistan’s first “b-girl”, a term to describe female breakdancers. Sporting short, choppy hair and a streetwear style, her cool and collected demeanour belies the endless hours of work she put in to achieve her dreams.

Now 21, she’s preparing to compete in the Paris Olympic Games, crediting Kabul’s close-knit breakdancing community for helping her get there.

Rocky road to the Olympics

But it hasn’t been an easy journey to the Games.

The breakdancing gym in Kabul came under attack multiple times, in a country grappling with political and cultural churn where the role of women in public draws particular scrutiny.

A car bomb exploded outside the venue and in a separate instance, police detained a would-be suicide bomber. The dancers were left with few options when the club eventually closed over security concerns.

As a female breakdancer, Talash also started receiving death threats. That was when she decided to change her name — Talash, the name she adopted, is a Persian word for “striving” — to protect her loved ones from potential danger. “I was only afraid for my family,” she calmly explained, maintaining the death threats wouldn’t stop her from achieving her dreams.

Then things got worse. In 2021, the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, bringing with them a controversial new set of crackdowns on women’s rights.

Talash didn’t wait for the Taliban to outlaw music and girls’ education or strip away their freedom to visit parks, fairs, and gyms. With her breakdancing dreams no longer tenable, she fled across the border into Pakistan, taking her 12-year-old brother with her.

The following year is one that the Olympian said she longs to forget. Unable to train, separated from her mother and stranded without a passport, she was forced to wait for her case to be processed so she could leave Pakistan for Europe.

She was eventually granted asylum in Spain, and found time to sporadically dance while adjusting to her new life and working in a hair salon in the small northern town of Huesca. It was Talash’s friends who refused to let the breakdancer give up hope, desperately reaching out to contacts and sharing Manizha’s story in the hopes of catching the attention of prominent sporting organisers. They were successful.

Once the Olympic Refugee Foundation caught wind of Talash’s story, her trajectory to sporting stardom took off.  While it was already too late to register for qualifying breaking events that ensure an athlete’s spot in the Olympics, her story of resilience captured the attention of the IOC executive board who offered her a spot on the Refugee Olympic Team. Talash headed to Madrid, embarking a gruelling six-day-a-week training programme and setting her sights on one of the world’s biggest sporting events: the Olympic Games.

Chasing Olympic gold

As a competitive sport, breakdancing is referred to as “breaking”, and it’s one of four new events debuting at this year’s Olympic Games in Paris. Over two days, starting on August 9, 16 b-girls and 16 b-boys will go head-to-head in solo battles, competing for judges points in the pursuit of winning gold.

The competition starts with a round-robin phase, after which winners advance on to quarterfinals, semifinals and the finals across five gruelling hours. During each battle, judges score the breakdancers on a number of skills including musicality, vocabulary, originality, technique and execution. Across the high-stakes tournament day, breakers have just 60 seconds to demonstrate their routine during the throwdown, the term for a best-of-three battle.

Talash will make history, competing under the name “B-girl Talash”, when she becomes the first athlete to compete for the Refugee Olympic Team in breaking at this year’s Summer Games, just three years after being forced to flee her home.

Between 1999 and 2002, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned Afghanistan over the country’s discrimination against women. Entry was later reinstated, but political turmoil in recent years has cast uncertainty over the country’s future Olympic participation. This year will mark the first time under Taliban control that six Afghani athletes will be permitted to compete in the games. The athletes will compete under the flag of the old Afghan government, in part because the Taliban isn’t recognised by the international community.

The decision to allow Afghanistan to send athletes to the Olympics has prompted concern from some, with the country’s first Olympic athlete Friba Rezayee calling on the IOC to ban Afghanistan from the games over their human rights record, saying it was “dangerous.” It’s since been confirmed the Taliban won’t be attending the games, and the team’s appearance has been touted as a “symbolic” move.

As a refugee living in Spain, Talash couldn’t be part of the Afghanistan team, and had to find an alternative route to the Olympics. For most refugee athletes, it’s unsafe to return to their home countries and compete for their national teams. The Refugee Olympic Team, which started with the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, selects athletes based on their sporting level and refugee status, making it possible for them to compete.

The size of the Refugee Olympic Team has grown over the last three Summer Games, mirroring the escalating global refugee crisis. ​​For the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, the refugee team comprises 36 athletes from 11 countries, and involves 12 sports.

This year, the IOC is championing a “1 in 100 Million” campaign to raise awareness of refugee athletes who are representative of the world’s 100 million displaced people.

Hope for a better future

For Talash, being at the Olympic Games is already an immense triumph. But, medals are also on the line and the Refugee Olympic Team hopes this could be the first year they win gold. As a relative newcomer to the competitive breaking landscape, Talash faces stiff competition from a number of award-winning b-girls. There’s a close contest for gold predicted among Japan’s b-girls Ayumi Fukushima and Ami Yuasa, as well as Lithuanian world champion Dominika Banevic and China’s Liu Qingyi (known as 671).

Talash will also represent the voices and dreams of women in Afghanistan when she takes to the world stage.

“I’m here, it’s not because I’m afraid of the Taliban or it’s because of my life, no,” the athlete said defiantly. “I want my big dream; I want to do something for the Afghan girls.”

After competing in her first Olympic Games, Talash also plans to kick-start a clothing line that draws inspiration from her home country and could even support women who are otherwise unable to work.

“I have a lot of plans for girls who are in Afghanistan,” she said. “If you can’t work outside, you can work at home, and you can help me make clothes here. So, I have many plans.”

Talash also remains optimistic about Afghanistan’s future and even hopes to return home and compete for her own country one day. “I think the future of Afghanistan can also be like other countries,” she added. “If the Taliban leaves, I’ll go. I would like to return to my country,” she said.

Like other Afghan voices involved with this year’s Olympic Games, Talash is determined that Afghanistan’s women and girls remain at the forefront of people’s minds.

“Please, do not forget the girls who are in Afghanistan,” she urged, adding: “My participation in the games shows the courage of Afghan girls, which means everyone can achieve their dreams, even if they are in a cage.”