NEWS & BLOG

For the past nine months Trhas has been wowing the community at West London Welcome and across the country as she builds her cycling career in the UK against the odds while still seeking asylum.

Supported by ourselves at West London Welcome and our wonderful friends at Team Africa Rising, ‘TT’ is still only 22 years old but we have been working closely with her since we discovered she was the National Road Cycling Champion back in Ethiopia.

We first met TT when she was living in an asylum hotel. She was very quiet and subdued at the centre at first, studiously focused on her English lessons but noticeably traumatised by her past and frightened about her uncertain future. She didn’t have a bike and hadn’t ridden in months but someone gave her a gym pass and she was working out four hours a day in an effort to keep fit.

We found out by chance while talking to her one day that she was actually a champion cyclist back home. Our charities got her a bike and all the kit, she has been racing regularly since May, and she recently won her first race on UK soil! She has met with Jon Dutton OBE, the President of British Cycling, and his organisation kindly granted her a racing license – vital to compete in the UK.  We also found her an excellent legal aid lawyer to take on her asylum case. TT is a changed person these days; always smiling, she has hope and optimism, trains constantly and has a race most weekends. War, conflict and her gender have all thrown obstacles in her way but this woman is a survivor and incredibly determined. Through our joint media efforts the BBC, The Guardian, Cycling Weekly and several others have now picked up her story.

Incredibly excitingly, cycling’s global governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) has invited TT to join the Refugee Team at the World Championships, which are being held in Switzerland next month on 21-29 September 2024. But here’s the gutwrenching kicker: she can’t travel to attend unless she is given the asylum interview she’s been waiting for for a year, and is granted refugee status. Time is quickly running out for her to be confirmed as taking part.

We have started a petition to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper asking for TT to be granted her substantive asylum interview, which has been widely circulated and which we ask you, reader, to please sign if you haven’t already. We have great hope and belief she will get a positive decision on her asylum claim and be granted refugee status, which would enable her to get a travel document and fly to Switzerland for this world-class event.

We’re confident that, should she be granted asylum, TT will go on to have a brilliant career in the UK where she is safe and can thrive as a top female athlete. Her being granted asylum and consequently attending the World Championships would be an incredibly positive and inspirational story, not just for our community, but also for refugee sportspeople of colour. It would echo the huge impact this summer of her former cycling colleague and close friend, Biniam Girmay – the first Black person to win three stages at Tour De France. This is the moment for Black and African cyclists.

This week TT has appeared on BBC London News to tell the world how she’d love to take up her place in next month’s World Championships, if the Home Office would only grant her asylum interview and her refugee status. We dearly hope they give her this interview within the nick of time so her dreams have a chance of coming true.

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You can sign our petition calling for Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to grant Trhas an asylum interview here.