Let everyone among us swim towards his friend,” said the prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). The Prophet himself swam towards Abu Bakr until he embraced him saying, “Here I am together with my friend.” Reported by Ibn Abbas.
Ata ibn Abi Rabah also narrated that he saw Jabir ibn Abdullah and Jabir ibn Umayr Al-Ansari while they were practicing archery. One of them felt bored so the other said to him, “Do you feel bored? I heard Allah’s Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) say, ‘All things in which there is no remembrance of Allah are frivolity and idle play except for four things, and he mentioned teaching another to swim,’” reported by At-Tabarani.
“We will teach Safwan to swim, and if he wants to continue, it will be up to him,” said the 16 month-old child’s parents Ahmad Al-Kudmani and Nadya Al-Faraidy from Dahran.
Swimming is an important sport for the couple not just because of the importance of swimming in Islam but also because twenty-six year-old Ahmad Al-Kudmani himself is a talented champion breaststroker.
Al-Kudmani has been swimming since the age of seven and at the age of thirteen he showed his swimming prowess to friends at the compound where he lived. Soon after he joined the Saudi national team.
“My parents have always supported me and that is what helped me the most especially during my early years,” he said. According to Al-Kudmani families play a massive role in creating and developing a competitive swimmer.
Al-Kudmani did not find it difficult to divide his time between studying and training and added that finding time to train even during the weekdays was never a waste of time. “Instead of studying for two to three hours a day and then doing nothing useful at home, why not do something that would be nefit oneself?” He said.
At that time he was hoping to swim in the advanced division where only 18-year-olds and above could compete. Luckily with hard work and training he was able to join the advanced division in 1994 and has represented the Kingdom, collecting around 100 medals ever since.
He represented the Kingdom first at the Gulf Countries Championship and then at the Arab Championship. When he graduated from Dhahran Ahliyya Schools in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, he received a scholarship from Aramco to study mechanical engineering in the US at the University of Southern California.
There his passion for swimming grew as he started to compete with Olympic athletes, which created a competitive atmosphere for him to enhance his performance.
His best record was achieved in 2005 during the first Islamic Solidarity Games held in Saudi Arabia. He won a gold medal at the 50-meter breaststroke for his new Arab record of 28.99 seconds, and a silver medal at the 100-meter breaststroke for his timing of 1:04.32.
Kudmani’s clocking of 28.99 supplanted his personal bests of 29.64 and 29.16 set during the Asian Age Group in Hong Kong in 2001 and Arab Games in Algeria in 2004. He also holds the Arab record for the 200-meter breastroke at 2:23.50 which he established on the way to the gold medal in the 1997 GCC Championships in Oman.
“Being a champion helped strengthen my confidence,” Al-Kudmani said. According to him confidence can be gained through many other things but sport and especially swimming have been pivotal in teaching him how to focus, set goals and then achieve them. Al-Kudmani said, “This is what I’m good at and this is what I enjoy.”
Al-Kudmani’s wife Nadya is a gynaecologist. Speaking to Arab News she said,
“I’m always proud of him and enjoy supporting him and attending the competitions he participates in abroad.” Nadya says she is unable to attend the Saudi events that her husband participates in because there are rules forbidding women from attending such venues. “I usually make sure one of our family members is there to send me on the minute results one minute after the other,” she added.
Al-Kudmani, who works at the Sea Water Injection Department at Aramco is presently on vacation spending quality time together with his family at home and also taking some time out to train.