Sonia now overall winner in national swimming champs

Dar es Salaam. As Tanzania athletes are now struggling to find qualifying marks in the Olympic Games scheduled to take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in August, two swimmers, Hilal Hilal (male) and Sonia Tumiotto (female) are ranked high in the country swimming record.

According to the national championship results released by Tanzania Swimming Association (TSA) recently, Hilal has improved his personal best time to beat other prominent swimmers in the country, Ammar Ghadiyali and promising , Collins Saliboko who is studying in United Kingdoms’ Saint Felix School.

Sonia has also scored high in the list after improving her personal best time to beat Magdalena Moshi, who is now based in Australia and Mariam Foum who is in Egypt. Both Magdalena and Mariam did not show up in the national championship due to unavoidable reasons.

Sonia who swims for famous Tanzania swimming club, Dar Swim Club (DSC), started the swimming gala with a bang for breaking 100 meter’s freestyle national record after recording 1.02.47 to beat a record put by Josephine Oosterhuis in 2015 of 1.06.33.

The 14-year star swimmer is now 1.30secs ahead of Magdalena who scored 29.62secs in the World Championship held in Kazan last year. She is also 0.84secs ahead of Mariam Foum who scored 29.19 in the Commonwealth Games held in Scotland in 50m freestyle.

Sonia also broke 200 meter Individual Medley (IM) national record with 2.36.38 to outshine 2015’s Oosterhuis of 2.50.07. She then breaks 100 meters backstroke national records drawn by Ito Sakura in 2013, after clocking 1.13.88. Sakura recorded 1.21.48.

Apart from that, Sonia managed to break her 2013 national record (2.31.06) in 200 meters freestyle after clocking 2.15.32 before breaking 400m freestyle record after clocking 4.55.30 respectively. The record was under Catherine Mason who won in 2013 with 5.21.05.

Other records she broke are 100 meters butterfly after recording 1.17.52 to beat Sakura’s 1.27.31, 100 meters Individual Medley (IM) with 1.13.04 to beat Ousterhuis (1.17.90), 200 meters backstroke after clocking 2.45.83 to beat Angelica Spence who recorded 3.07.44, 50 meters freestyle with 28.32 to overwrite Oosterhuis’s record which she put in 2015 of 29.73.

Hilal who swims for the swimmers who are 17 years and above has improved his swimming record since he joined Dubai camp. He currently holds national championship record in 100 meters freestyle with 54.16secs to overwrite his former record set in February last year.

He also set new record in 50 meters butterfly with 26.06 to remove his old record of 26.77 before breaking another top record in 400 meters free style of 4.39.52 to beat his former record set in 2013 of 4.51.47 and later fix another national record of 1.00.66secs in 100 meters butterfly to remove in the chart Bloor Stuart’s record set in 2014 of 1.00.89.

Hilal continued to shine in the country after putting another convincing record in 50m breaststroke of 31.60secs to outshine Iyas Shivji record set last year with 33.11secs before breaking his own record of 29.68secs in 50m backstroke and draw new record of 29.46secs and later broke another 100m breaststroke record set by Stuart in 2014 of 1.12.44 to set the new one of 1.10.76.

The experienced swimmer also broke his national record of 50m freestyle of 24.74secs to put the new one of 23.21secs respectively.

Hilal is also the best in male as per his results in both Kazan and this year’s national championships. Hilal scored 24.86secs in 50m and 1.03.87secs in 100m in freestyle in Kazan. He also scored 23.21secs in freestyle in 2016 national championship in 50m and 54.16 in 100m in the same category in the national championship respectively.