arena is pleased to announce that it has signed World Championship medallist Farida Osman in a sponsorship deal that runs through to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The 23-year-old Egyptian, a freestyle and butterfly sprinter, won the 50m butterfly bronze at the 2017 World Championships in Budapest, and currently holds the African records in 50m freestyle, and 50 & 100m butterfly.
The daughter of dentist parents, Farida was born in Indianapolis, USA, and raised in Cairo, Egypt, where she started swimming at a young age. After taking a break to pursue her synchronized swimming passion – “I loved how we used to dance in the water, and how fancy, creative and flashy the swimsuits were” – she returned to swimming, and made the Egyptian national team for the first time at the 2007 Pan Arab Games in Cairo, where she became the youngest ever Arab athlete to win the 50m butterfly title and break the Arab record. She was 12 years old.
In 2009 as a 14-year-old, she competed in her first World Championships in Rome, and then two months later at the Junior African Championships in Mauritius she won the 50m freestyle, butterfly and backstroke events, setting junior African records in the first two. Farida won her first global title – 50m butterfly – at the…
