Road to Paris: Quest for third Olympics leads Egypt's Ali Kalafala to Oklahoma
The road to the Olympics leads swimmers from around the world through the American university system. A number of universities, from countries far and wide, large and small, could potentially contribute to the approximately 800 Olympic swimmers who will flock to Paris this summer. Until that happens, over the next six months, we'll be highlighting the swimmers' journeys in our new Road to Paris story series.
Ali Kalafala He was looking for a new place to train in 2021. The house he found may seem unusual.
The Egyptian team was invigorated after its second Olympics in Tokyo that year. He remained at his alma mater, Indiana University, after graduating in 2018 and later became the sprint coach. Corey Stickels To Alabama. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the postponement of the Olympics, he briefly returned to Bloomington and then spent the next nine months in his home country.
Carafala wanted to make another strong attack at the Olympics, so he sought stability. So he contacted his first high school coach. Chris Vanslooten, then enrolled at Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia. Van Sleuten relocated to Oklahoma and helped Kalafala be introduced to a Division II program at Oklahoma Christian in Edmund, overseen by a longtime coach and U.S. Olympic gold medalist. Josh Davis.
Three years later, the 27-year-old is settling down, moving on to the next chapter of his swimming career and moving towards life after the sport.
“It's been a good adjustment as we face changes in life and life presents itself in many different ways,” Kalafala said recently. “Things are changing, but things are going well.”
It's been a long journey for the sprinter, who left his hometown of Cairo in 2011. He spent more than 10 years in the United States at Virginia before becoming a 10-time All-American with the Hoosiers.
At the 2016 Rio Olympics, which concluded his second season in Bloomington, he placed 23rd in the 50-meter free, tying a national record in the process. Five years later, he placed 24th in the 50 and 30th in the 100 in Tokyo.
Since then, Carafalla has made a decision common to late-career sprinters to focus on the 50 free. The first thing he did was Noah Yanchulis Currently at Cal, coordinating a super specialized sprint program with my assistant Trevor Loomis and Patrick Wagoner. Even if the way you train in your late 20s is a little different from the way you train in your late teens, having an OC team to train with will give you camaraderie.
“It was nice to swim with the team and have some sprinters swim with me, but it was more geared towards the 50 free,” he said. “I've never done anything like that before, so it really helped me. I've always done a lot of cardio (training) and a little more intermediate sprints and long distances than usual, but now I'm doing 50 free. Everything is ready for it.”
Calafara is well on his way to Paris. He had a strong match at the TYR Pro Swim Series in Knoxville in January. A week before leaving for the African Games in Ghana, he said he won the 50 free and 50 butterfly. The winning time of the 50m free was 22.02 seconds, which was a tournament record and made the Olympic B cut. This was faster than her first Olympic swim of 22.25 seconds in 2016.
Kalafala's focus at Oklahoma State goes beyond the pool. He proposed and they got engaged in the typical Oklahoma setting of Tulsa's Philbrook Art Museum. He has followed the familiar path of conducting swim camps and clinics. So he earned his real estate license and threw himself into a career that emphasizes the local knowledge he's accumulated over the years.
He approaches new challenges with the same resilience and diligence he honed over the years in the pool.
“I've accepted in the last year and a half that life is more than just swimming,” he said. “If you rely on swimming and make it your identity, the ups and downs will be very painful. No matter how long you swim, you will find that you have other passions and energy to pursue. I’m really glad I was able to accept that I could be included.”
Kalafala has been around long enough to track Egyptian swimmers through the ages.he came of age Marwan Elkamashi I'm 30 years old now, and Farida Osman. Karafalla followed Elkash to Indiana, where Osman was born, before returning to Egypt.But the stars of the younger generation – NCAA champions at Virginia Tech. Yusef Ramadan Louisville/Notre Dame sprinter Abdelrahman El Araby – reinforcing the idea that the older star wasn’t a one-off lucky break.
Each of the group's journeys had its own contours and required hours of immense patience. That's what Kalafala tries to explain when she returns home and answers questions from people who want to take them and their children to where she got to.
He hopes his examples in and out of water will help illustrate the complexity of that quest.
“Every time I go back to Egypt for a domestic competition, the first question I always get asked is how do I get my son or daughter to the U.S. or how do I go to train in the U.S.,” he said. . “That's the No. 1 question, because they know that based on the five to 10 people who have come to the United States over the past few years, they've been successful and done really well. They're… We recognize that there is something in the American waters that will move the Egyptians forward and make them do really well.”
