Personal information | |
---|---|
Full name | Kimiko Raheem |
Nickname | Kimi |
National team | Sri Lanka |
Born | Colombo, Sri Lanka | 28 January 1999
Height | 167 cm (5 ft 6 in) |
Weight | 55 kg (121 lb) |
Sport | |
Sport | Swimming |
Strokes | Freestyle, Backstroke |
Kimiko Shihara Raheem (born 28 January 1999) is a Sri Lankan national swimmer who has represented her country at several international competitions. She represented her country at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She won multiple gold medals at the 2016 South Asian Games in the backstroke and freestyle events. [1] She won the highest number of medals by a Sri Lankan woman at the 2016 South Asian Games in India, and was named Best Female Athlete of the Games by the Bangladesh Sports Press Association. [2] She is the younger sister of Mayumi Raheem and Machiko Raheem both of whom hold national records themselves. She was a semi-finalist at the 100m backstroke event at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. [3] She holds numerous Sri Lankan national records and South Asian records in her name.
Raheem currently lives in Phuket, Thailand where she trained at the Thanyapura Aquatic Training Centre from mid-2015 leading up to the Olympic Games. This was under a FINA scholarship awarded to multiple swimmers from several countries. Cherantha de Silva was the other Sri Lankan swimmer who was given a scholarship by FINA. She went to the British International School in Phuket, but currently is finishing her high school in the United World College of Thailand. She has previously lived in Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Singapore and Qatar.
In February 2018, Raheem was named to Sri Lanka's 2018 Commonwealth Games team. [4] [5]
Mayumi Raheem is a swimmer from Sri Lanka who won 3 gold medals at the 2006 South Asian Games in the Women's 50 metres, 100 meters and 200 metres breaststroke. She also won 5 silver medals and 5 bronze medals, bringing her total to 11 medals, a record for any athlete at a single Asian Games.
Belinda Hocking is a retired Australian backstroke swimmer. She is an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship holder.
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Olivia Smoliga is a 2X Olympian and American competitive swimmer who specializes in backstroke and freestyle events. She won a record eight gold medals at the 2018 World Championships, becoming the first swimmer, male or female, to win eight or more gold medals in a single FINA World Swimming Championships or FINA World Aquatics Championships. Smoliga is the current American record-holder in the 50-meter backstroke. She is also the current Guinness World Record holder for "most gold medals won at a single FINA World Championships" by an individual swimmer. At the 2016 Summer Olympics held in Rio de Janeiro, she won a gold medal for swimming the backstroke leg in the preliminary heat of the 4x100-meter medley relay.
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Machiko Suharmee Raheem is a Sri Lankan medal-winning swimmer who has represented her country at international competitions. She represented Sri Lanka in the women's 50 m, 100 m and 200 m freestyle swimming events at the 2016 South Asian Games, winning a silver medal in the women's 200 m freestyle event.
Deshabandu Julian Bolling is a Sri Lankan medal-winning swimmer who has represented his country at numerous international competitions. He is fondly remembered as the poster boy of Sri Lankan swimming as well as the pin-up boy of Sri Lankan swimming in the 1980s. He has won 15 gold medals for Sri Lanka at the South Asian Games between 1984 and 1991. He also represented Sri Lanka at three Olympic Games, firstly at Los Angeles (USA) in 1984, then at Seoul in 1988, and finally at Barcelona (Spain) in 1992. He was the first Sri Lankan ever to participate in three consecutive Olympics.
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