Egypt’s Zain Ali had already put himself in front by the time he reached the wall halfway through the men’s 100m butterfly final in Dakar. The swimmers turned for home, but nobody caught him. On Sunday, 1 November, he touched first in 52.16 seconds to win Youth Olympic gold at the Dakar Aquatics Centre in Senegal.
World Aquatics recorded Ali’s time at the turn as 24.18 seconds. That figure on the results sheet is the time for his first 50 metres. His second length took 27.98 seconds. It was slower than his opening length, but he held his lead all the way to the finish.
Serbia’s Aleksej Kalanj came home in 54.03 seconds, which left 1.87 seconds between gold and silver. Matiáš Krištof of Slovakia won bronze in 54.71. There was a smaller gap between the two men who joined Ali on the podium than between Ali and the swimmer who came closest to catching him.
After the race, Ali described to World Aquatics the work behind those two lengths. Four years earlier, he said, reaching this level had felt a long way off. He recalled getting up at four in the morning to train. He also described being taken by surprise by how happy he felt when he had won.
It was a second kind of success for African swimmers on opening day. In the women’s 400m freestyle, South Africa’s Leah Markgraaff won silver in four minutes 26.13 seconds. Ecuador’s Elvira Espinosa won that race in 4:22.87 and with it the first gold medal awarded at these Games.
What it means for you: If you are following the results from Nigeria, the two African medals came in quite different races. Markgraaff covered four times Ali’s distance in a different stroke. His margin of victory should be read against the other men in the butterfly final; her placing came from the women’s freestyle times.