January 10, 2020
seen competing in a race in South Korea.
An Iranian female athlete hoping to compete in the 2020 Olympics has been trying to join her Iranian-American fiance in California but has been blocked by the Trump Administration despite having been interviewed for a visa as far back as 2016.
Maryam Toosi has been trying to come to the US not only to live with her husband, but also to pursue her Olympic Games dream.
The 31-year-old won gold in the 400 meters at the 2012 Asian Indoor Championships while wearing a headscarf.
Toosi first sought to enter the US to take advantage of the superior facilities, professional coaching and a culture that celebrates track and field because she knows Tokyo could be her last shot at competing at an Olympics, given her age.
But since falling in love and getting engaged to Iranian-born US citizen Moein Mohsen, a DJ in Los Angeles, she has been even more determined to make the move.
“Getting the visa would mean everything. Everything,” she told Reuters in a telephone interview from her current training camp in Cyprus.
“Moein travels here every other month, spending thousands of dollars to come see me…. If he didn’t push me, I probably wouldn’t be in Cyprus right now training. I would have given up this dream.”
“When I first started chasing the dream of winning a gold medal or even qualifying for the Asian Games, everyone made fun of me — the federation, all the other athletes,” she explained. “They asked, ‘How are you going to even qualify with the hejab, or the training you do?’ Even with the lack of training, I was still able to set those records and win that medal, and I’m here in Cyprus to prove I can do it at the Olympics, too.”
The Iranian record holder at 100m, 200m and 400m, Toosi has suffered the agony of missing out on Olympic qualification twice before, in part due to technical errors made by race officials, she asserted.
After those disappointments, she applied for a visa so she could train in the US, but despite having her interview in August 2016, five months before Trump became President, she has still not received a decision.
“The problem is that Maryam is stuck in administrative processing due to President Trump’s Presidential Proclamation 9645 — that is, the travel ban,” Parviz Malakouti, Toosi’s lawyer, told Reuters.
As Toosi continues to train in Iran and Cyprus, Malakouti is exploring all legal avenues to get her a visa while fiance Mohsen keeps rooting for her.
“I love Maryam, and I’m sad she hasn’t been able to reach anywhere close to her potential as a talented runner because of being stuck in Iran,” Mohsen said.
“I pray that Immigration gives her a travel ban waiver so she can come to the United States to live the American dream as an athlete and we can start our life together.”