When Ssengonzi opened the path for Kirabo’s gold

October 17, 2015 will forever be seen as a memorable date in Ugandan swimming circles. It is on this day that Uganda won its first ever continental medal courtesy of Rebecca Ssengonzi at the Africa Junior Championships in Cairo, Egypt.
Swimming in Lane 2, Ssengonzi clocked 1:03.74 to win silver in the 100m butterfly finals of the girls’ 15-16 years age group.
Ssengonzi, 15 at the time, finished just microseconds behind Zimbabwe’s Robyn Lee (1:03.51) and nearly a second faster than Algeria’s Nesrine Medjahed bronze medallist (1:04.69).

For those who were present, like teammates Tendo Mukalazi and twin brothers Fadhil and Nabil Saleh, this is a memory they will forever cherish especially because little had been made of Ssengonzi’s chances.
She had after all qualified for the final as seventh seed with her preliminary time (1:06.99) bettering only Tunisia’s Lydia Asli (1:07.17) among the top eight.
“She was swimming on the far end from where we were sitting and, honestly, we did not expect much,” Mukalazi recalls watching the moment with the twins, their mother Patricia Isabirye, their coach Lindsay Takkunen, Rebecca’s now fallen dad Robert, her brother Jesse and their teammate – also Buganda princess Katrina Ssangalyambogo.
“Then she turned third or fourth after the first 50 metres and did a good under water. All of a sudden we start to get hyped up and start screaming to push her.
With about 25 metres to go, she was still third and I started to believe she was going to win a medal. Then she kept her head down after the last flag and came second.”

Anthem blip
Then Uganda Swimming Federation (USF) president, Dr Donald Rukare, admitted to checking with organisers of the championships on whether they had Uganda’s anthem just in case she came first.
‘Fortunately,’ she did not – saving everyone the ‘embarrassment.’
For Fadhil and Nabil, it was a moment of inspiration and pride.
“She put us on the map in terms of African swimming and it showed me that we could be just as good as other countries that win medals constantly at big competitions,” Fadhil shares.
For Nabil, the fact that Rebecca went on to double her money with another medal – bronze in the 400 individual medley (IM) – at “one of the biggest events on the continent” showed that she and the country were “worthy of being there (on the podium).”

Three days after her butterfly feat, Ssengonzi was back to Lane 1 on the last day of the championship again with the seventh best qualification time for the 400 IM final. But she clocked 5:18.06 over eight seconds off the new meet record (5:09.32) set by South African gold medallist Kristen Straszacker.
The details mattered little then as did the rest of Team Uganda’s performance. Usually, Uganda went to such competitions in search for personal bests (PB) so the medals felt like the sport had been re-born in the country.

A new dawn
That performance changed everything as Uganda started to aim for more glory.
“For me it was the greatest moment as a coach but also for the nation because we had never attained such levels,” team coach Peter Mugisha, shares.
“We shook the waves in African swimming and rubbed the egos of some coaches from Egypt the wrong way. But looking back, the medals were a progression from the 2013 Juniors in Zambia. The girl and team were growing,” he adds.
Ssengonzi had been to Lusaka, Zambia, in 2013, where she participated in the nine events, making the finals in the 50m backstroke and fly events.
“In Cairo, we were disadvantaged because we had a small team with swimmers that were also small in stature. They had a hard time settling in the call room as most of our opponents were thick and looked like basketballers but Rebecca was determined,” Mugisha said.

“When we had our flag raised – for the first time in African swimming by the way – some of the other coaches wanted to know more about her.
“We told them the truth, which is that she had been born and raised in Uganda but had recently moved to the US for studies. It gave them a bit of relief but we assured them that we would soon have a home-based swimmer break records at this meet.”
Indeed, the prediction came to pass as Kirabo Namutebi scooped double gold (50m freestyle and breaststroke) at the 2019 edition in Tunisia.
But that is a story for another day.
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