The world’s best swimmers came together in Abu Dhabi for the FINA World Swimming Championship.
The Arab competitors came away with only one medal (silver), which went to Tunisian Olympic champion Ahmed al-Hefnawi for the 1,500 metres freestyle.
Egypt was represented by Abdel Rahman Sameh, Farida Othman, Marwan el-Kamash, Mohamed Sami, Youssef el-Kamash and Youssef Ramadan.
The Pharaohs came fifth place in the men’s 50×4 metres medley final, setting a new record for Africa of 1:32.56 minutes.
Youssef Ramadan came fourth in the 100 metres butterfly at 49.5 seconds, while Farida Othman was in eighth place in the 100-metre butterfly qualifying for the finals after achieving a time of 56.62 seconds.
The US team bagged 30 medals — 9 gold, 9 silver and 12 bronze.
Hong Kong’s swimmer Siobhan Bernadette was crowned best swimmer and Russian Kliment Kluzhnikov won the men’s title.
Germany’s Florian Willbrück broke a world record in the men’s 1,500m freestyle on the final day of the competition.
Willbrück, who won gold in the 10 kilometres open water race and a bronze medal in the 1500 metres freestyle at the Tokyo Games, finished the race in 14:06:88 minutes, breaking the previous record set by Gregorio Paltrinieri of 14:08:065.
“I always prefer the long distances, and earlier this year I couldn’t imagine breaking the world record here because I was setting poor records in the short pools,” Willbrück said.
Between 16-21 December, one thousand men and women from 180 countries competed for $2.8 million in prizes.
In the men’s 4×50 metres medley, the Russian and American teams finished at the same time, 1:30:51 minutes. The Russian team included Andrei Minakov, Karyl Stenkolov, Klement Kolesnikov and Vladimir Morzukov, while Nick Fink, Raid Heald, Shane Casas and Tom Shield swam for Uncle Sam.
For the second time in the history of this contest, a gold medal was shared, four days after America and Canada both won gold in the 400 metres freestyle in the same tournament.
The 16th FINA World Swimming Championships will be hosted by Russia on 17-22 December 2022.
