At the 2015 World Aquatics Championships, 10-year-old Alzain Tareq became the youngest swimmer to compete. She was in the 50m butterfly, but finished last in 41.13 seconds, which ... actually didn’t bother her.
The youngest swimmer at the World Aquatics Championships is 10 DANG YEARS OLD
She is certainly bound for the 2020 Olympics.
Matthias Hangst/Getty Images
According to the Associated Press, she was pretty happy to be there, regardless of how she did. She even got to compete against a swimmer she looks up to -- Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden:
“I feel so happy,” said Tareq, who succeeded in getting a photo of herself with idol Sjostrom.
Her time didn’t matter; she is in Kazan to soak up knowledge from her opponents.
“I want to learn the techniques and how they swim,” she said.
This sounds like a prodigy in the making, and her father revealed that she has an even bigger desire to be the student that becomes the master:
“She said, `Look, these are my idols. I want to beat them in the future,‘” her father said. “I said, `When you reach that time they are probably gone, but you can beat their times.’”
As for now, she’s got plenty of time to train, which is already heavy as it is and apparently started since she was four:
Tareq trains five days a week in Manama, where she has access to 25- and 50-meter pools in the capital of the Persian Gulf nation, which has no swimming tradition. She attends school from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., rests for an hour and then swims.
“We’re not burning her out,” said her father Tareq Salem, a former swimmer.
Tareq has a whole life ahead of her to become just as good as her peers -- perhaps even better -- and it wouldn't be surprising to see her at the 2020 Olympics. You can read more about Tareq over at the Associated Press.
(h/t Belleville News-Democrat)
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