Anas Al Khalifa (born 1993) is a paracanoeist, who competed for the

Refugee Paralympic Team at the 2020 Summer Paralympics The Refugee Paralympic Team, previously the Independent Paralympic Athletes Team, competed at the 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo, Japan, from 24 August to 5 September 2021. The team consisted of six refugee and asylee Paralympic athletes who r ...

. Born in Syria, he now lives in Germany.

Personal life

Al Khalifa was born in 1993 in

Hama , timezone = EET , utc_offset = +2 , timezone_DST = EEST , utc_offset_DST = +3 , postal_code_type = , postal_code = , ar ...

, Syria. He fled the country due to the Syrian civil war. He lived in an

internment Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

camp for two years, before fleeing to Turkey in 2014. He later travelled through Greece, and in August 2015, Al Khalifa arrived in Germany, where he got a job installing

solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...

s. He has lived in

Halle Halle may refer to: Places Germany * Halle (Saale), also called Halle an der Saale, a city in Saxony-Anhalt ** Halle (region), a former administrative region in Saxony-Anhalt ** Bezirk Halle, a former administrative division of East Germany ** Hall ...

, Germany. In 2018, Al Khalifa broke his back in a workplace accident, and became reliant on a wheelchair. His brother was killed in Syria in 2020.

Career

Al Khalifa is coached by former Olympian Ognyana Dusheva, and trains at . He started training in 2019 in an indoor swimming pool. In April 2021, he failed to qualify for the German paracanoe team for the delayed

2020 Summer Paralympics The , branded as the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, was an international multi-sport parasports event held from 24 August to 5 September 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. They were the 16th Summer Paralympic Games as organized by the International Paralym ...

. In May 2021, he competed at the Paracanoe World Cup event in Szeged, Hungary, and later in the year he also competed at the

2021 Canoe Sprint European Championships The 2021 Canoe Sprint European Championships (31st) was held from 3 to 6 June 2021 in Poznań, Poland. Canoe sprint Medal table Men Women Paracanoe Medal table Medal events Non-Paralympic classes Notes References External linksOf ...

, where he beat his

personal best A personal record or personal best (abbreviated to PR or PB) is an individual's best performance in a given sporting discipline. It is most commonly found in athletic sports, such as track and field, other forms of running, swimming and weightlift ...

time by over five seconds. In June 2021, Al Khalifa was announced in the

. He competed in the

KL1 KL1, or Kernel Language 1 is an experimental AND-parallel version of KL0 developed for the ICOT Fifth Generation Computer project. KL1 is an implementation of Flat GHC (a subset of the Guarded Horn Clauses language by Kazunori Ueda), making ...

and VL2 events, finishing sixth in the heats of both events. He finished ninth overall in the KL1 event and was fifth and last in his VL2 semi-final. Later in the year, Al Khalifa came fifth in the

event at the

2021 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships The 2021 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships were held from 16 to 19 September 2021 in Copenhagen, Denmark. In a break with convention, these championships were held in an Olympic year as the COVID-19 pandemic forced a year-long postponement ...

. He competed for Germany at the championships.

References

External links

* *
Refugee Paralympic Team: Meet Anas Al Khalifa
{{DEFAULTSORT:Khalifa, Anas 1993 births Living people People from Hama German male canoeists Syrian refugees Syrian emigrants to Germany German people of Syrian descent Refugees in Germany Canoeists at the 2020 Summer Paralympics