OLYMPIANS WITHOUT BORDERS
What it’s like to compete when you have “no flag to march behind”
SIX NIGHTS A WEEK, Popole Misenga travels by bus from a favela in the northern reaches of Rio de Janeiro to a private college on the city’s west side. The trip takes roughly two hours, and once he arrives—often beat from a day’s work loading trucks—he makes his way past the classrooms to the school’s small outdoor gym, where he slips on a heavy white judo robe, steps barefoot onto blue vinyl mats, and grapples with his workout partners until exhaustion sets in.
These days, Misenga is an Olympic-caliber athlete without a country. But before he was
