LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Ask most athletes what they did in the offseason, and you'll get a tale of time off, workout regimens and physical and mental recovery.
On Monday, when I asked Nadia Nadim, I knew the answer would take a while.
Back in Louisville with her Racing Louisville FC teammates, the international standout is rehabbing from a knee surgery that ended her campaign a year ago. But that hasn't seemed to slow her down.
Since she was last here, she has finished her medical degree, visited Qatar to work with Afghan refugees and worked to rehabilitate her knee so that she can make a successful return to the pitch. In between, she was all over Europe, it seemed, doing good work, and studying.
"Honestly, I feel like I can breathe a bit better," she said after a Racing Louisville FC scrimmage at its Champions Park training facility. "The last three months, I'm going to be honest, it was very, very tough. I'm not a person to get stressed. But I think that was stress. It was intense. Yeah, I was, just because, you know, I had so much and everything was going on with my rehab. But it just shows what humans are capable of. I love this, that you can always push the envelope a tiny bit more. And again, passing the exams and finally be done, it makes me — I sleep very well, let me just say that way."
Everywhere Nadim goes, her story follows her. At age 12, she escaped her native Afghanistan with her mother and sisters, wound up a refugee in Denmark, and the rest is part of her history. She landed at a camp next to a soccer facility, fell in love with the game, became a soccer star, captain of the Denmark National Team, played for a championship team at Paris Saint-Germain and now is in Louisville, looking to build something special.
Racing Louisville FC's Nadia Nadim talks with Afghan refugees in Qatar.
After the U.S. pulled its military out of Afghanistan, creating another refugee crisis, she found herself again speaking for those who had no voice. And over the winter, visiting with evacuees from Afghanistan who had settled in Qatar. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine now having displaced a half-million people and counting, her insight into the refugee experience is again in demand.
"I mean, again, I think war is, is dumb," Nadim said, a sentiment that translates well into any of her seven languages.
"I don't understand it. And the worst part is it's always, you know, the innocent ones that suffer the most. The ones that actually don't know what's happening — the children, the women — have to leave their countries. Seeing what's happening in Ukraine breaks my heart. You know, I read this morning was like, a half-million people trying to escape the country. And it's sad. It makes me upset, because no one really wants to do that. Seeing that everywhere is unfair. And you feel powerless, I guess. I think that's what I feel."
Most of us can feel that injustice, but we haven't experienced it. Nadim has worked with refugee groups, particularly with children, particularly with soccer, to try to bring them the gift of a game that they can play and experience a bit of childhood again, a place where they can escape.
Asked what those fleeing Ukraine need most right now, she said, "Humanity, they just need a bit of human kindness. ... You know, leaving your home, fleeing with nothing, just with your bags, it's winter. It's cold. Every helping hand, you can get, you know? I hope that the NATO countries are going to be open and help them as much as possible. Right now, everyone's just trying to survive, trying to be somewhere safe, because their homes are not safe. So, I think in that situation, everything counts. If it's just like, you know, let them in and just say on your guard, or wherever ... I see those pictures in the news, and it's heartbreaking. A child doesn't need that. You want them to have a safe environment somewhere where they can try to become good humans, not fleeing from war and all the horror."
Nadim left Louisville as a patient. She returns as a doctor. Her specialty — when she completes advanced work — will be reconstructive surgery. But the hard part of getting her medical degree has now been complete, though it wasn't easy doing that and trying to do her knee rehabilitation at the same time.
A poster of congratulations for Racing Louisville's Nadia Nadim finishing medical school, from her sponsors at UNESCO, Visa, Nike and Neverland Management.
"It was very tough, just because I think I was lacking time," she said. "You know, I was already behind when I arrived in Denmark. And, usually, you have a semester that's built off certain subjects and usually have like 30 points. Mine was 45 points. So, every other student had three exams. I had six exams. And in the same time, I was intern serving, so I had to be at the hospital every day from 7:30 to 3. I just felt I was lacking time to study. So, it was very hard, you know? But again, if you really want something from the bottom of the heart and you work for it, I think it's going to happen. And I'm so pumped that it's overwhelming."
New Racing coach Kim Björkegren said he doesn't have to call her Dr. Nadim, but he is looking forward to coaching her. At the moment, she has not been cleared for contact drills and is mainly continuing her rehab and doing cardio work. She hopes to rejoin the team in a couple of months.
"I think, right now, it is important to have the same strength back in my knee," she said. "Usually, when you get an injury, your muscles disappear like this. And kind of having the same symmetry in your left and your right is very crucial. I know this is still, we've done a lot of testing this first week in Florida, and there's still a couple of percentage off from the right and left. So this is what I've been mainly focusing on. And of course, while I'm here, you guys saw I was doing my cardio workout as well. So, it's just going to be overall get my strength, get a bit bigger, stronger and then cardio wise as well."
One thing should help: Nadim, it would seem, never stops moving.
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