The 2015 African Junior Swimming Championships wrapped up from Cairo, Egypt today, after having kicked off on October 17th. South Africa was victorious as a nation, claiming the team title with a girls and boys combined medal haul of an incredible 69 medals, broken down to 24 gold, 29 silver and 16 bronze.
The long course meters events were held in prelims/finals fashion with the qualifying heats taking place in the morning and finals in the evening. In addition to gender, the age groups were broken down into two segments – ‘G1’ designates those athletes born in 2001 and 2002 and ‘G2’ designates those swimmers born in 1999 and 2000.
A host of meet records were broken across the four days and key highlights include:
- Zimbabwe’s Robyn Lee was responsible for a remarkable four championship marks, earning gold medals by sweeping the girls G2 backstroke events. Lee set new meet marks in the 50m backstroke in a time of 29.95, the 100m backstroke in 1:05.07 and the 200m backstroke in 2:20.44. Lee also scored a gold medal finish in the girls G2 50m butterfly, touching first in a time of 27.98.
- Egypt’s Mohamed Essam Hegazy earned three gold medals across three freestyle events, kicking off the entire competition with a win in the boys G2 1500m freestyle race (16:01.75). Hegazy’s next two events rendered new championship records, as the 16 year-old clinched victories in the 200m freestyle in a new meet mark of 1:55.51 and the 400m freestyle in a new meet mark of 4:01.82.
- 14 year-old Abdallah Ardjoune from Algeria managed to crack two meet records of his own within the boys G1 age group, registering new championship record times of 27.93 in the 50m backstroke and 59.84 in the 100m backstroke.
- Egypt’s Ahmed Khaled Rateb, 14, earned a new meet record in the boys G1 200m freestyle, touching in 1:59.11 for gold. In fact, the top 4 finishers in that race all finished beneath the old meet record of 2:01.66 set back in 2009.
- South African G1 competitor, Hanim Abrahams, snagged wins in the girls 50m breaststroke in 33.30 and 100m breaststroke in 1:11.93, both new meet record marks for her. On the G1 boys’ side, Algerian youngster Moncef Aymen Balam accomplished the same feat, taking home golds in the 50m breast and 100m breast in new meet record marks of 30.82 and 1:06.71, respectively.
- Within the older boys’ G2 age group, 15 year-old Michael Houlie doubled up on breaststroke wins, swimming away with the gold in both the 100m breaststroke (1:04.99) and 200m breaststroke (2:22.41) races.
- Egypt’s Mariam Rashed Abdel swam her way to a sprint freestyle sweep in the meet, taking the girls’ G2 50m and 100m freestyle events. Her times of 26.79 and 57.77 earned Abdel new championship records in each event.