SEE Interviews Farida Osman Fresh after Winning FINA

Fresh out of winning the Bronze medal in this year’s 2019 FINA World Swimming Championships in South Korea, SEE interviewed Farida Osman about her great victory, training camp and future goals.

Your success in swimming inspired a lot of people to seek world fame in the sport, do you recommend it as a career?

I think having a sport as a career definitely has it’s ups and downs. I also think education is very important that’s why I chose the University of California Berkeley because it has strong academics and a strong athletic program which is swimming for me.

I learned so much about myself as a swimmer, as an athlete. I also learned my strengths my weaknesses and how I perform under stress.

So I think having a sport as a career definitely has a lot of ups I think it gives a lot back not just to you but to other people because you get to inspire and be a role model to others… So I think having sports as a career is definitely something beneficial, but at the same time I think you need to also have a good strong academic background.

You have become a house hold name in the sport, and the current face of swimming in Egypt.. Because of you, do you think swimming can become as popular as Squash and Weightlifting one day?

I think a lot of swimmers have been performing well over the past 2-3 years; the Egyptian team have been the strongest ever.

So, I definitely think swimming is moving in the right direction in Egypt and I think a lot of people started to recognize it; more so, I think It will be one of the biggest sports in Egypt, may be in a few years.

 

How did you prepare for the Championships this year?

For my preparation for the world championships I moved to Virginia.. I was in the university of California Berkeley and once I graduated I moved to Virginia to train with a new coach called Sergio Lopez.. And I have moved there since November and have been training there.

I had a meeting with my coach in the beginning of the year where we stated all of our goals and what we want to achieve at the end of this season and we practiced based on these goals. And at the end of June, we decided to go to Bali to implement a training camp before the world championships because of the time difference, and time zones.

We wanted to be able to get ready for the world championships because it’s in South Korea, so you had to go somewhere before as to prepare and get used to the time zones and time difference.

So, we stayed in Bali for 10 days to adjust and then after Bali we went to South Korea on the 18th of July so three days before the world championships so we could also see the competition pool, where we are going to stay, sleep. It was all an adjustment period before the championships started on the 21st.

So it started on the 21st of July I swam the 50 hundred free 50 hundred Fly in South Korea.

How many hours a day did you train? And is your training pided to the sports specifics or do you crunch it all at once?

I didn’t just do swimming for my training I also lift weights and did Yoga and sometimes pilates.

It’s not about how many hours I trained. I had 9 sessions a week, each session was two hours and that’s only swimming and like I said there are other regiments I follow besides swimming, there’s gym, there’s pilates or yoga. Either pilates or yoga depends on when in the season, sometimes I do spinning.

So depending on when we are in the season I do a combination of swimming, gym, Pilates and Yoga.

Was there any sort of change to your training routine?

Regarding change said I moved to Virginia from California so there was defiantly a change.. New coach, new training area , new team. Definitely, I took a lot of time to adjust because California and Virginia are two totally different states. So with a new coach came new training.

I took a few months to adjust to my new routine as it was different this year than the year prior.

 

Was the challenge this year harder or easier than 2017 ?

I think this year was kind of harder than 2017 because this year, people expected a lot from me since I won the Bronze medal two years ago in the 50 meter butterfly world championships; to be honest, it added a lot of pressure and I think the fact that I achieved it once was great but the fact that I had to achieve it again is not easy at all. It takes double the hard work or even triple.

So it definitely wasn’t easy to achieve it again in 2019, because I was under lots of stress because of the expectations.

 

Do you have any sponsors at the moment ? If so who are they ?

Yes, I do have sponsors at the moments which are Hyde Park Developments, Garhy Steel and Arena. Arena is the swimsuit brand that I wear for my competitions.

I appreciate everything that my sponsors do for me, without them I wouldn’t be able to achieve what I achieved and more. They have been supporting me day in and day out and I’m so grateful in their belief and trust in me.

 

What are you future plans for the sport at the moment ?

Now I’m taking a few days off, I have the African Games at the end of August so I will be representing Egypt again at the African games. In September I will be heading back to Virginia to start my training for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Regarding the sport in general, I really want to give back to the young athletes or young swimmers.

Growing up I didn’t have the right tools or resources that I needed so much throughout the journey so I feel like I want to share my story, with the young athletes and swimmers who want to achieve great things at the international level.