After leaving his training post unannounced for Saudi Arabia in a reported attempt to naturalize and represent the Gulf nation, junior swimmer Rami Rahmouni is back representing his home country of Tunisia.
We first reported in September about Rahmouni’s abrupt departure from Phillipe Lucas’ France-based training group. Regional sports media reported that the 16-year-old was training privately in Saudi Arabia as he and his parents engaged in talks with the nation about swimming under its flag in exchange for “a large sum of money”.
Rahmouni’s Tunsian sports club, Espérance, called the move “sports smuggling,” with club leadership calling on the Tunisian government to take action.
These worries are now abated, as Rahmouni is competing for Tunisia. He recently competed at the French SC Elite Championships attached to Tunisia, and he was pictured with the national team.
Rahmouni, who could be the next star in a dynasty of Tunisian distance swimmers, put up three top eight finishes in France last weekend. He raced to gold in the 800 free with a time of 7:45.06. He added a 15:11.44 1500 and 3:44.00 400 freestyle to round out his first meet since the long course French Elite Championships in June. All three swims fell short of the lifetime bests he established at this meet last year as a 15-year-old (3:43.83/7:41.00/14:51.79).
The Tunisian Swimming Federation, which publicly expressed concern and support for Rahmouni when he was in Saudi Arabia, highlighted Rahmouni’s performance on its Facebook account.
Under the Tunisian flag, Rahmouni faces some of the toughest domestic competition in the world to make an international squad in distance events. Country mates Ahmed Hafnaoui and Ahmed Jaouadi took the distance doubles at the 2023 and 2025 World Championships, respectively. Hafanoui is currently serving a suspension through 2026 for missing doping tests. Like Rahmouni, Hafnaoui and Jaouadi came up under the training of Phillipe Lucas in France. They are now based at the University of Florida in the U.S.
Can’t wait for Philippe Lucas’s next currently unknown tunisian swimmer in 2027 to abandon him after winning gold in the 800m/1500m
My first thought was hating this as a potential future. After a second of reflection, I paying for athletes could be a great thing as it’s a pay for swimmers. Idfthis is how swimming gets it’s monetization, so be it.
You say that because you’re not Tunisian if you were you wouldn’t like it