Tunisian swimmer Ahmed Hafnaoui took a shock gold medal in the men’s 400m freestyle on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 18-year-old won from the outside lane after qualifying slowest, but finished with stunning pace to beat Australia’s Jack McLoughlin with a time of three minutes 43.36 seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I just can’t believe it. It’s a dream and it became true. It was great, it was my best race ever,” said Hafnaoui.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was Tunisia’s fifth ever gold – and third in swimming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US swimmer Kieran Smith took bronze at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hafnaoui, son of former Tunisian national basketball player Mohamed Hafnaoui, competed in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games, finishing eighth in the 400m and seventh in the 800m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2019, he told Tunisian outlet La Presse he was aiming to win his first gold medal at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hafnaoui will have a second shot at gold as he competes in the 800m freestyle, with heats starting on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hosts Japan also celebrated a surprise gold in the women’s 400m individual medley, as Yui Ohashi pipped two Americans to the top step of the podium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It doesn’t feel real. It is like a dream for me,” said the 25-year-old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I couldn’t go to the Rio Olympics, so for the past five years this became a big dream for me. This accomplishment is amazing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BBC Sports News<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tunisian swimmer Ahmed Hafnaoui took a shock gold medal in the men’s 400m freestyle on Sunday. The 18-year-old won from the outside lane after qualifying slowest, but finished with stunning pace to beat Australia’s Jack McLoughlin with a time of three minutes 43.36 seconds. “I just can’t believe it. It’s a dream and it became […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27983,"featured_media":25349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_paywall_metabox":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[6493],"class_list":["post-25347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-hafnaoui"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27983"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25350,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25347\/revisions\/25350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}