In sports, some performances are remembered for their flawlessness, while others, like Eric Moussambani, are remembered specifically for his near-miss. A 22-year-old swimmer from Equatorial Guinea took the starting blocks at the Sydney Aquatic Center early on September 19, 2000. There were 17,500 seats in the building.
Prior to that week, Moussambani had never seen a 50-meter pool. Back in Malabo, he had trained in rivers, lakes a hotel pool that was only available to him between five and six in the morning. The pool was only twelve meters long. Fishermen who attempted to coordinate his arms and legs to prevent him from sinking provided him with coaching in the broadest sense of the word.
Moussambani unexpectedly found himself alone on the blocks when the two other swimsuits in his heat one from Niger and the other from Tajikistan dived in early and were eliminated. According to most accounts, the expression on his face was somewhere between bewilderment and sheer terror. He took a step forward.
What came next was one of the most bizarre and subtly impactful things the Olympics have ever produced. With his head mostly above the water and his arms and legs moving in an uncoordinated manner, Moussambani flailed thru the first lap. At the halfway point, he executed a flip turn, which surprised many in the audience. When the second lap started, things became more difficult.
The audience fell silent. Moussambani began to sink. He appeared to disappear beneath the surface close to the turn, according to Craig Lord, the journalist who gave him the moniker “Eric the Eel” at the time.
The mostly Australian audience, almost all of whom were probably better swimsuits, held their breath. Lifeguards moved closer to the swimming area. The race changed from being about swimming to being about whether or not this man would reach the wall at some point in those last fifteen meters.
He succeeded at one minute and fifty-two seconds, he halted the clock. Pieter van den Hoogenband, who won the men’s 100-meter freestyle that year, clocked in at 48.30. Moussambani actually trailed 26 swimsuits who competed in the 200-meter event, which is twice the distance, by more than a minute. By a wide margin, it was the slowest time in Olympic history.
He received a standing ovation from the audience. That picture has something worthwhile to look at. Rather than laughing or simply moving on to the next heat, many spectators in a crowded arena watched an athlete struggle to do the thing that defines the sport he entered.
loudly. “This is what the Olympics is all about”, remarked Ian Thorpe, who was arguably the world’s most famous swimmer at the time. Thorpe may have had a somewhat altruistic intention. It’s difficult to completely disagree after watching the video.
With no qualifying requirements, Moussambani had entered the Games thru a wildcard draw intended to encourage participation from developing countries. According to reports, IOC President Jacques Rogge believed the entire event to be a hoax. In a technical sense, perhaps it was.
The man traveled to a nation he had never been to, trained for eight months on essentially nothing gazed into a pool he had never seen before. That is not insignificant.
After that, he became a true celebrity in the Olympic Village. He was signed by Speedo to do promotional work throughout Europe. He continued swimming by 2006, his personal best had dropped to 52.18 seconds, almost halving his time in Sydney.
He was turned away from the 2004 Athens Games because of a mistake in his visa paperwork, which seems like the kind of bureaucratic afterthought that comes after a tale like this. He later started coaching the national swimming team of Equatorial Guinea.
Naturally, the moniker stuck. Ethiopian swimmer Robel Habte, who finished half a lap behind his heat in 2016, was compared to “Eric the Eel” in every Olympics since 2000. Although the comparison is typically intended to be a lighthearted joke, it also has additional meaning. A sort of recognition that the individual had the courage to appear.
Moussambani later claimed that something changed during those last few meters as the crowd grew louder and he continued to run despite his body failing and his lungs burning. The precise effects of that type of noise on someone who is about to quit are still unknown. He felt that touching the wall was sufficient in some way.