Syria's 'refugee' swimmer splashes her way to stardom

BERLIN - As the crowd erupted in applause for swimmer Yusra Mardini at the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, it was hard to believe the teenager nearly drowned at sea just a year earlier while escaping war in her native Syria.

Now the extraordinary story of the young athlete who took Rio de Janeiro by storm is to be told in a Hollywood movie and a memoir that she hopes will inspire others and challenge negative perceptions of refugees.

"It was the biggest sporting event in the world. It was crazy, it was amazing," Mardini, now 20, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in her new home city Berlin.