Nov. 26, 2013

CAIRO, Egypt – Already one of the top swimmers in Egypt, South Carolina sophomore Marwan El Kamash has been solidifying his spot this week at the Egyptian Championships where he has already broken the 400 and 800 freestyle national records.

“Marwan is having a great meet in Egypt,” swimming and diving head coach McGee Moody said. “He wasn’t able to race with us last week in Virginia because of his travel to Egypt where he needs to swim a certain number of meets to remain eligible for their national team and put him in a position to represent his country in Rio in 2016. We are very pleased with his races and times and he is steadily moving up within the NCAA. He is going to have a huge impact for us at SEC’s and NCAA’s.”

In four races so far, the native of Alexandria, Egypt, has won three events, winning the 200, 400 and 800 freestyles. With the top seed time in the 400 freestyle, El Kamash showed off why he was the top swimmer in the field. The only athlete to enter the field with a sub-four-minute time in the prelims, he shaved nearly five and a half seconds off of that mark to hit the wall in 3:52.47 for his first record of the meet.

He then went out and dropped his seed in the 200 free by more than two and half seconds to win that race with a time of 1:49.90.

His second national record came in the 800 freestyle where nearly a dozen swimmers in the field had lower seed times than him. El Kamash swam a time of 8:02.26 to win by just under three-tenths of a second to break the record.

In his fourth race, the 50 freestyle, he went into the finals with the second fastest time of the prelims and finished the event in that spot, clocking a time of a 23.65, just over seven-tenths of a second off the winning pace.