Everyone loves rooting for the underdog in sports, but for Olympic swimmer Eric Moussambani—also known as Eric the Eel—the word “underdog” was an understatement.
Moussambani followed an unusual path from his home in Equatorial Guinea to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Nine months before the games, he heard about a wildcard program the International Olympic Committee had developed to encourage competitors from smaller nations to participate in the Olympics. Rules at the time allowed small nations that didn’t qualify any swimmers by time to still send an athlete to compete.
He responded to the call to be an Olympic swimmer for his country. The only problem? He barely knew how to swim.
The 22-year-old had started swimming shortly after high school but had little opportunity to actually develop any actual swimming skill. He’d learned to swim in rivers and the sea, with fishermen telling him how to use his legs in the water so he didn’t sink.
“We didn’t have a swimming pool. We didn’t have anything, and I went to train at a private hotel pool that was about 13 metres long I think,” Moussambani has explained. “I trained on my own and I had no swimming experience. The pool was only available from 5am to 6am and I was only able to train for three hours a week…There was nothing professional about it at all.”
With a few months of that level of training, Moussambani showed up in Sydney to compete in the 100m freestyle. He had never even seen a 50-meter pool before, much less swam in one. His Sydney pool preparation happened at the same time as the U.S. swim team, so he tried to watch and learn what he could from them.
“I didn’t have any experience how to dive or how to start. I had to ask people how to do it,” he said.
South Africa’s swim coach helped as well, even giving him a pair of swim trunks and goggles when he noticed the swimmer only had shorts to wear.
When it came time for his heat, Moussambani was supposed to swim with two other swimmers, but both of them entered the water too early and were disqualified. So he was forced to swim his heat all alone. He was terrified that the crowd would laugh at him.
It was clear as soon as he dove into the water that he wasn’t quite the Olympic calibre swimmer spectators are used to seeing, but he swam his heart out. By the time he had swum a full length of the pool, however, Moussambani was clearly fatigued. The second leg of his swim saw him floundering in the water as he slowly made his way through the second 50m of the race. He said he couldn’t feel his legs and felt like he wasn’t moving forward at all. But then he heard the crowd cheering for him and it gave him the strength and power to finish.
Watch:
The True Story of Eric “The Eel” Moussambani at Sydney 2000 | Olympic Rewind
Even though his finish time was more than double the average competitive swimmer, he was thrilled to be the first person from his country to ever complete a 100m swim in international competition. That was really the whole point of the wildcard program in the first place, so even though his time wasn’t good, he had achieved something no one else from his central African nation had ever done.
But Moussambani didn’t stop there. He kept swimming and improving his time in the 100m, cutting it by more than half a few years later. And he has since been a staunch advocate for developing swimmers in Equatorial Guinea. The country now has two 50m pools, and in 2012 Moussambani became the country’s swim coach.
“I try to help young people who want to become good swimmers. I want to encourage them to swim and to take up sport,” he said.
Sometimes the best Olympic stories aren’t the winners but the unexpected heroes that come out of the games, showing us the strength and tenacity of the human spirit and inspiring us to not let anything keep us from moving toward our goals.