Twenty-year-old Ophelia Swayne, Ghana’s fastest swimmer, is trying to raise funds to achieve her dream of becoming Ghana’s first woman swimmer to make it to the Olympics.
The freestyle and butterfly specialist needs to shave just a second off her time to qualify for this year’s Olympics in Rio, Brazil. She has however indicated that Ghana’s Olympic Committee is willing to foot the cost of her flight bill and the rest is up to her.
The President of Ghana Swimmer Association, Theophilus Wilson Edzie, decried that funding allocated to the federation is inadequate. “ ... the funding is not there for us…we are a small sports growing against bigger sports… the big sports get the bigger chunk of money,” he lamented.
Despite challenges, Ophelia Swayne hopes to overturn Ghana’s fortunes as the country has not won an Olympic medal in this category since 1992.
