Flame Bearers: Pathways to Paris

When Haydy won the 2019 Pentathlon African Championship, she became the first athlete worldwide to qualify for Tokyo. She now hopes to become the first Egyptian woman to compete in two different Olympic sports: she will be competing in modern pentathlon, and she's additionally hoping to qualify in fencing. In this episode, Haydy Morsy discusses trailblazing as a young woman athlete and aspiring sports journalist. We’ll begin by exploring how Haydy got into Modern pentathlon, learn about how her family has supported her, and then meet the mentor who helped pave the way for Haydy’s second career as a future sports journalist. Experts interviewed include Ahmed Morsy (Haydy's brother), Kata Stevens (Journalist and Audio Producer) Inas Mazhar (Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Head of Sports Section, Al Ahram Weelky Newspaper & Professor of Sports Media, American University in Cairo), Moamen Gouda (Associate Professor, Middle East Economics, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies; Associate Lecturer, Hamburg University in the program of Law and Economics in the Middle East), and Salma El-Naqqash (Feminist Researcher & Program Analyst, UN Women's “Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces for women and girls in Egypt”). Audio from: UIPM Modern Pentathlon's July 16, 2019 Facebook post, Olympic Channel's "Sport guide: Modern Pentathlon Explained", and TIME's "The Uprising: Reflections on the Egyptian Revolution by Dominic Nahr."