When the swimmers took to the blocks in the final of the men’s 400m Freestyle, the spotlight was placed on the two fastest qualifiers- Austria’s Felix Auboeck and Germany’s Bennet Henning Muhlleitner. No attention was given to Tunisia’s Ahmed Hafnaoui in lane 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But lane 8 would soon capture the attention of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hafnaoui was seeded last. His qualifying time of 3:45.68 was two seconds slower than Muhlleitner’s. In sports, two seconds can feel like a lifetime. So to his competitors, the media and those watching around the world, Ahmed Hafnaoui was an afterthought. He would be a footnote in the race, so the storylines were devoid of his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet Hafnaoui’s storyline was perhaps the most significant one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tunisia has been devastated by Covid. Suffering one of the worst outbreaks on the continent, other nations rushed to help the stricken North African country. Earlier in the month<\/a>, Saudi Arabia rushed 1 million vaccine doses to Tunisia, adding to the 800,000 combined doses previously sent by the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, and Turkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, Covid wasn’t the only ailment plaguing the reeling country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n