Top Gambian swimmer appeals for more scholarships

He pointed out that without standard swimming pools, it will be difficult for Gambian swimmers to produce good timings.

Ebrima was in 2019 awarded a scholarship by the Federation International De Natation (FINA) to train for one year at the FINA High-Performance Center in Dakar, Senegal.

The Tanji-born young swimmer specialises in freestyle and butterfly sprints and was the winner of the first organised National Swimming Championship.

The 20-year old holds the national record in a 100-meter freestyle race in both 25m and 50 meter pools.

The Gambia is without a 50m Olympic pool and as such Gambian swimmers have over the years been travelling to neighbouring Senegal to train when preparing for international competitions. Local swimmers have lately been using the QCity Swimming pool in Bijilo for training but the pool was recently closed.

Buoro, who recently returned from a month training camp in Senegal at the FINa Center to better prepare for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, said he hard to start afresh when he returned to The Gambia because he could only train in 15m and 20m hotel pools which are below standard in terms of dept and size.

He also appealed for the construction of a standard swimming pool in The Gambia.

He made his first debut at short course of the 14th FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) held from 11 to 16 December 2018 in Hangzhou, China, where he was ranked 115th place for the 25m-meter And freestyle race.

In May of the same year he represented The Gambia at the Algerian Swimming Championship – Boy’s 100m Breakstroke.

In 2019, he competed at the long course of the 18th FINA World Aquatics Championships, held in Gwangju, South Korea, from 12 to 28 July 2019. He clocked a timing of 27.83 seconds.

A month after that, he competed at the 2019 African Games in Rabat for the first time. Burro competed in the men's 50-metre freestyle event and the men's 100-metre freestyle event.

In 2020, Ebrima was one of three Gambian swimmers in the 7th Africa Zone 2 Swimming Championship held in Accra, Ghana.

Buaro, who has set his sight on securing the best timing of his career to date when he competes at this year's Tokyo Olympic Games in Gambian colours will make his debut on Friday 30th July 2020 in the heat one free style.