Tunisian Ahmed Hafnaoui Earns Gold in Upset 400 Meter Swim Victory
The dreaded outside lanes of the pool are where the slowest seeded swimmers are placed in any given swimming race. As such, those swimmers tend to get overlooked in races, as they often do not have a shot at earning a top 3 finish. However, the Olympic 400-meter swim race defied that general rule in an exciting way. Ahmed Hafnaoui, an 18 year old athlete from Tunisia, won the race from lane eight, earning the fifth gold medal ever for Tunisia.
Hafnaoui finished the race on Sunday with a time of 3:43.26, less than a second ahead of the number two finisher, Jack McLoughlin from Australia, and the number three finisher, Kieran Smith from the US. “I dedicate (the gold) to all my family, my mum, my dad, my sisters, I wish they are proud of me” he said in an interview afterwards.
This is especially impressive, considering the fact that he barely qualified for that race in the first place, making into the finals by a gap of 14-hundredths of a second. Furthermore, he is considerably younger and less experienced than most of his other competitors. Nevertheless, he managed to persevere, thinking not about his time but about the chance of earning a medal: “When I hit the water, I was just thinking about the medal, not the time.”
Many people learned about his win through videos of him winning. In this video, the commentator does not even notice him until about a minute and a half into the race, with Hafnaoui remaining near the front for large portions of the race. His reaction to winning is very fitting and captured the attention of everyone watching.
Hafnaoui became the second Tunisian to win a gold in swimming. The last one was Ons Mellouli, who won gold in the 1500 freestyle at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and in the 10k swim in the 2012 London Olympics. “I wish to be like him one day,” Hafnaoui said. He also became the second youngest athlete from an African nation to earn a gold in swimming. The youngest athlete, Joan Harrison of South Africa, won her gold in the 100 Backstroke at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics when she was only 16. Interestingly, he actually planned on trying to medal in the 800 meter freestyle, which is taking place this thursday.
Hafnaoui began swimming at age 6, when his father Mohamed Hafnaoui, himself a former basketball player for Tunisia’s national team, enrolled him in a swimming program. At age 12, he joined Tunisia’s national swimming programme. He competed in the 200, 400, and 800 freestyle events at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, scoring 8th in the 400 and 7th in the 800. He then competed in the 400, 800, and 1500 at the 2019 World Junior Championships in Budapest, earning 4th in the 800 with a time of 7:49 and 6th in the 1500 with a time of 15:16.04. Unfortunately, most major competitions were cancelled in 2020, although he continued to practice and improve over that time.
Hafnaoui also plans on attending college in the United States, although he has not specified where yet. He presumably also plans on swimming at whatever college he ultimately attends.
This gold medal puts the Tunisian gold count at five. Besides Mellouli, the other two golds are from Mohammed Gammoudi in the 5000 meter run at the 1968 Mexico City games, and Habiba Ghribi in the 3000 meter steeplechase at the 2012 London games. So far this year, Mohamed Khalil Jendoubi earned Tunisia a silver in the Men’s 58 kg class of Taekwondo.
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