Although he has not won a medal, Hilal smashed his local record and emerged winner in Heat 4 in the 50-meter free swimming competition.
Dar es Salaam. When the slim Tanzania Olympic team left for Brazil in groups, only a few people believed faith that anything good would come out of it. With almost half of the athletes eliminated in their disciplines, any hope in medals continued to dip further. But, this sorry state notwithstanding, Hilal Hemed, a swimmer in the Olympic contingency, has given Tanzanians a reason to smile.
Although he has not won a medal, Hilal smashed his local record and emerged winner in Heat 4 in the 50-meter free swimming competition.
Hilal who featured in the games via an universality ticket, clocked 23.70 seconds, the best in Heat 4.
Nevertheless, Hilal could not make it to the semi-finals because even though he beat his local record, but his time was not fast enough to enable him a slot among the 16 swimmers who made it to the semi-finals. Most of those who made into the semi-finals finished in at least 22 seconds.
Hilal’s feat dominated social media and websites last Thursday after finishing in the first position of Heat 4 group in the 50 metres Olympic Games freestyle event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Hilal beat six other swimmers to win the first position. This reminded Tanzanians the last time the country won medals in the Games, was 36 years ago.
Tanzania won its first medals in the 1980 Games held in Moscow, Russia through Filbert Bayi and Suleiman Nyambui.
