Rwanda National Swimming Federation is optimistic that it will send some athletes for the Rio Olympic Games slated from August 5-21 in Rio, Brazil. The swimming quartet of Johanna Umurungi (100m breaststroke), Patrick Rukundo (50m freestyle), Olympic swimmer Alphonse Agahozo (100m breaststroke) and Eloi Imaniraguha (200m freestyle) are working hard to beat the Olympic standard time of qualification in A cut. The president of the National Swimming Federation Samuel Ufitimana has said, the swimmers have been tasked to make sure they hit the International Olympic standard time because ‘we don’t want to send them on wild card tickets’ “Whoever will beat the standard qualifying time will head to Rio, which is why we selected the best two female and male swimmers in each category.” Ufitimana says, already they are witnessing some positive results from Imaniraguha who has been training in Thailand since December last year, in the freestyle and butterfly category. “We are optimistic he will beat the minimum qualification time, there is great improvement and hopefully he can overcome the remaining seconds if he works harder before the deadline and qualify on the B cut,” Ufitimana explained. Rwanda has an advantage according the Rio standard qualification system, if Imaniraguha meets the B cut, the nation is entitled to send two additional swimmers on the Universal placements (wild tickets). Last year, Imaniraguha posted a personal best in the 200 freestyle with a time of 2:20:68 in the FINA World Championships in Kazan, Russia. Both Agahozo and Rukundo will have to beat the time of 0:26:17 and 0:23:05 allocated for the B cut freestyle respectively, while Umulungi has to overcome a time of 0:58:74 or 1:00:80 for both the A and B cuts in the 100m women break strokes category. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
