Kimia Alizadeh

In January 2020, Alizadeh announced that she was leaving Iran permanently for Europe. Explaining her defection, she stated, "I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran who they have been playing with for years." She does not intend to compete for Iran in the 2020 Summer Olympics, and expressed desire to compete for her current place of residence, Germany.

On 10 January 2020, Alizadeh announced she was defecting and leaving her birth country, with searing criticism of the regime of Iran. She does not intend to compete for Iran in the 2020 Summer Olympics, and is considering competing for Germany.

She was listed in 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2019 by BBC.

She wrote an Instagram post explaining she was defecting because of constraint of women in Iran, calling herself "one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran who [Iran’s rulers] have been playing with for years." "They took me wherever they wanted. I wore whatever they said. Every sentence they ordered me to say, I repeated. Whenever they saw fit, they exploited me," she wrote, adding that credit always went to those in charge. She wrote further that she "didn’t want to sit at the table of hypocrisy, lies, injustice and flattery" any longer, nor remain complicit with the regime’s "corruption and lies."

Abdolkarim Hosseinzadeh, a member of Iran's parliament, accused “incompetent officials” of allowing Iran’s “human capital to flee”.

Kimia was born in Karaj. Her family are Iranian Azerbaijani. Her father is from Zonuz near Tabriz and her mother is from Ardabil. Until after the 2016 Olympics, her last name was incorrectly recorded as Zenoorin.

Alizadeh at 18 years of age won a bronze medal in the taekwondo 57 kg weight class at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro by defeating Swedish athlete Nikita Glasnović. Her victory made her the first Iranian woman to win a medal at a Summer Olympics.

She also won a gold medal in the women's 63-kg class at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympics. She beat London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 gold medallist Jade Jones at the 2015 World Championship to win a bronze medal. She also won a silver medal two years later at the 2017 World Taekwondo Championships.

In the months prior to her defection a number of top Iranian sports figures had decided to stop representing — or to physically leave — Iran. In September 2019, Saeid Mollaei, who practices judo and was world champion, left Iran for Germany after Iranian officials allegedly pressured him to throw a match to avoid competing against Israelis. Alireza Firouzja, who was Iran's top-rated chess champion, decided to stop playing for Iran in December 2019 because of Iran's informal ban on competing against Israeli players. Alireza Faghani, an Iranian international soccer referee, left Iran for Australia in 2019.

Kimia Alizadeh Zonouzi (Persian: کیمیا علیزاده زنوزی ‎, romanized: Kīmiyā Alīzādeh Zonūzī; born 10 July 1998) is an Iranian Taekwondo athlete. Alizadeh won a bronze medal in the taekwondo 57 kg weight class at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro by defeating Swedish athlete Nikita Glasnović. This made her the first Iranian woman to win a medal at a Summer Olympics. She also won a gold medal in the women's 63-kg class at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games. She beat London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 gold medallist Jade Jones at the 2015 World Championship to win a bronze medal. She also won a silver medal two years later at the 2017 World Taekwondo Championships.