At only 15 years old, Rana Saadeldin is making her debut at the Olympics. The Sudanese swimmer hasn’t won any medals yet, but her performances at the World Aquatics Championships in Japan (2023) and Qatar (2024), as well as the Cana Junior Championships in Mauritius, earned her an invitation to join the World Championship in Paris this summer.
“It’s actually a bit scary, because I'm one of the youngest,” she says in an interview with OkayAfrica. “But it also gives me motivation that I am one of the youngest and I’m going to the Olympics. This is ‘wow’ to be honest.”
Saadeldin learned how to swim at age three, because her father works with boats and frequently took the family out to sea. “We always go on boats and fishing, and if anything happens there, at the beach or at a swimming pool, he wants us to know how to swim, so we can be safe,” she says.
At age five, she began training and impressed the coaches with her skillful movement; they encouraged her to take it seriously and by the time she turned eight, she was already entering competitions. Being in the water had become an integral part of her life. “At this point, one day without swimming feels like I didn’t do it for a week or a month,” she says.
Every day after finishing her school and homework, Saadeldin trains for two hours. On Fridays and Saturdays, she swims long hours early in the morning and only Sundays are off. Her three siblings swim competitively, too.
Photo courtesy of Rana Saadeldin.
Rana Saadeldin was born into a family of swimmers.
When asked whether she enjoys competitions, Saadeldin answers with a decisive “of course,” saying that the challenge motivates her to push harder during training. “I compete to improve myself and learn from my mistakes,” she says. “I hate when I get last, I always want to get first, not even second, not third, always first. Even if I break my number and I get second, I feel happy because I broke my number, but I feel like I could have pushed even more to get to first place.”
This mindset propelled her from competitions in the United Arab Emirates to Sudan’s national team and on the global stage, which Saadeldin admits she didn’t think she’d get to. “When I see people my age and I compare my number with theirs, I feel like I’m slow,” she says. “But I also realize that I'm the fastest girl in my country, and I just need patience. You know, patience is the key to success.”
During the ten years of her swimming journey, Saadeldin has had many moments of wanting to give up. When that happens, she gives herself pep talks, remembering that training is not a linear process and honoring all the hard work she already dedicated to this dream.
“It goes up and down,” she explains. “Maybe tomorrow is the best day that I have been training. I feel really good in the water. I feel really fast. I feel amazing. And then the next day I come and swim and I feel really, really bad. So not every day is a good day, not every season is a good season. When you have a bad season, this is when you have to push even more so you can make yourself even better.”
Photo courtesy of Rana Saadeldin.
Rana Saadeldin trains six days a week.
Through her training, Saadeldin has become friends with other female Sudanese swimmers. “[Representing Sudan] means a lot to me,” she says. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me, because in Sudan, there are not a lot of girls that swim. So me being one of the few girls that go to the Olympics is just amazing. I want to be the first ever [Sudanese] girl to get an Olympic medal in swimming. If that does not happen this time, hopefully it will happen in 2028.”
By then, Saadeldin will have graduated from high school and entered university where she wants to study Sports Physiotherapy. She’s not only a super young Olympian, she’s also an unusually young student who started school at the age of three. Still, she feels like she’s getting older.
“I want to go back to being a kid and running everywhere and just playing and screaming, you know, and enjoying life,” she says with a laugh. “Now I can't do that. I scream when I'm swimming. I take care of my energy, positive and negative, everything, every energy that I have, in swimming, which is very cool.”
All this energy will aid her when she competes in Paris on July 30, where she hopes to break her own number, set a new Sudanese record, and get first in her heat. “I take it step by step,” she says. “I wouldn't say I want to go into the semi-finals because right now that’s going to be impossible.” But Saadeldin is determined to continue training hard every day until 2028, when she hopes to return to the Olympics by qualification, not invitation, and make it to the finals.
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