Kornacki: Al-Yamani Clinches Long-Shot Bid for Olympics on Team Yemen
7/11/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Swimming & Diving, Features, Olympics
By Steve Kornacki
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Mokhtar Al-Yamani had just completed swimming his laps at the Canham Natatorium with a group of University of Michigan swimmers headed to the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Al-Yamani was still dripping wet as he took a seat on a hard plastic folding chair, and looked past the long lanes of the shimmering aqua pool water and beyond the Dick Kimball Diving Pool. There on the far wall was a clock counting down the time to the beginning of the 2016 Olympics in Brazil to the millisecond.
He smiled and said, "I'm always looking at that clock as I walk into practice, and as I walk out. It is a motivation, for sure."
Al-Yamani has bucked some crazy odds to become an Olympian by representing his father's homeland, the Republic of Yemen.
He might never have so much as learned to swim had he not nearly drowned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan as a 2-year-old, prompting his non-swimming parents to get him into swimming lessons for his own safety.
He might never have come to Michigan if he hadn't been so persistent about finding out why emails he was sending to coaches weren't prompting replies.
And if he hadn't met Wolverine coach Mike Bottom, it's safe to say the closest he would've gotten to the Olympics was watching them on TV.
Al-Yamani, a freshman from Tokyo, never dreamed he would be headed to Rio in early August. But his freestyle times kept improving, having learned a new approach to finishing races with optimum results from Bottom, and he ended up swimming on the Big Ten championship 800-yard freestyle relay and earning All-Big Ten first team honors.
Still, his personal bests wouldn't qualify him for the Olympics on the U.S. team or even the Japanese squad.
"One of our goals is to put people in international competitions," said Bottom, recently named an assistant coach for Team USA for Rio. "We ask, 'Where are you from? What is the possibility you will make an international team?' Mokhtar has a U.S. passport, a Japanese passport (from his mother Nahoko's country) and a Yemen passport (via his father, Ali).
"When I found out Yemen was in the mix, I said, 'You'll never make it for the U.S. this year, but maybe sometime in the distant future, and Japan's pretty tough. But Yemen, I don't think they've ever had a swimmer qualify. So, I said to him, 'Would you like to go to the Olympics?' I don't think that at that time he believed he could. But I said, 'Look, we can do this and it will be worth it for your experience and our experience.' It unites our team in understanding what we're all about."
Bottom rose from his office chair and wrote the names of eight countries on the grease board. He was coaching current or former Wolverines from those countries prior to his Team USA appointment and believes strongly in the Olympic quest. Bottom could very well have won a gold medal swimming in the 1980 Olympics, but U.S. President Jimmy Carter opted to boycott those Moscow Games because the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan.
Rather than becoming bitter over his personal loss, Bottom made it his goal to open the Olympic dream to as many swimmers as possible. He had planned to coach Al-Yamani in Rio before getting the U.S. team position, and is helping connect him with a suitable replacement.
Al-Yamani was down to his last chance in his last race to meet the Olympic qualifying standard in April at the Canadian Olympic swim trials at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, a qualifying site option he was given.
"It was a three-day meet," said Bottom, "and Mokhtar didn't make it in the 200(-meter) but had a shot to make it in the 400(-meter). We thought that might be the easier race for him to make it in, but his 200 had been so good and he dropped a lot of time there this season."
So, Bottom proposed using Al-Yamani's time from the first 200 meters of his 400-meter qualifying race as a possibility for qualifying him in the 200.
"Mokhtar was all in," said Bottom, noting that he had Al-Yamani's father clear the proposal with the proper officials. "He was out so fast that it was a no-brainer he was going to make it.
"He has a very unique ability to do what we call 'go-to-body' and changes his stroke in the last 25 yards. It allows his hips to rise, and he doesn't have to kick as hard. It attaches his arms to his body as opposed to trying to muscle through his arms to get to the end. He picked that stroke up well. We taught it to him earlier this year, and it's something we teach here that originated with our work in stroke technique. We developed body-driven freestyle."
Al-Yamani leaned back in his folding chair and smiled at the memory of attaining the qualifying time of 1:51.2 in the 200 meters. The cutoff time he needed to reach was 1:51.78, and so he made it with just over a half-second to spare.
"Perhaps it wasn't the most conventional way of qualifying," he said, "but I'm really excited that I was given this opportunity. I think I'm just as driven and just as ready as the other guys to compete.
"I made it on my last shot."
A long-shot Olympian qualifying on his "last shot" was fitting. So was qualifying in an unconventional manner because Al-Yamani's path to swimming in Rio is nothing if not very different.
His mother grew up in Japan, but came to the U.S. to study at the University of Kentucky. There, she met her future husband, who was studying on a state-funded scholarship from Yemen. They moved to the New York City borough of Queens, where Mokhtar was born.
"I came to Japan when I was three months old," said Al-Yamani, "and grew up in Tokyo."
He attended St. Mary's International, a K-12 school where he met Michigan swimmers Bruno and Miguel Ortiz (the NCAA All-American brothers who will represent Spain in Rio) and Ryutaro Kamiya, all members of the Wolverines' 2013 NCAA championship team.
"We swam together for many years and went to the nationals together," said Al-Yamani. "So, I spoke to them about Michigan, where they were all doing great. I emailed the Michigan coaches but I wasn't getting any reply, and I realized I didn't have the best times.
"So, I emailed Bruno and Miguel and asked if their coaches were getting my emails. They talked to them for me and I found out that I was sending to an old email account. So, if it wasn't for them, I would never have gotten here. They put in a good word for me and it went from there."
He might never have become a swimmer had it not been for a harrowing experience at a beach in Japan when he was a toddler.
"I fell out of my floatee into the ocean and nearly drowned," Al-Yamani said. "Neither of my parents can swim, and they decided to put me in swim class for safety. I also had asthma, and it helps with that. I no longer have asthma."
He won an age-group national competition when he was 14, set a national record, and transferred to a club team during his junior year in high school to receive the proper coaching.
Then he followed his friends to Ann Arbor, and his dreams got real big.
Al-Yamani said his father, as a result of his study program, knew many government officials in Yemen and was friends with the captain of the country's soccer team, who is on the Olympic committee. Ali takes great pride in his country, decorating rooms in Arabian style and furniture, and was thrilled by seeing his son qualify to represent his nation in western Asia.
"My parents came to those Canadian trials," said Al-Yamani. "They told me, 'You'll get it in your last race.' When I got it, I went up to the stands and they said, 'Oh, you got it!' My mom's going crazy and just crying. My dad is shouting, "Yeahhh! It's for Yemen!' He even brought a hand-sewn Yemeni flag and waved it."
Mokhtar said he was asked to be Yemen's flag bearer, carrying the flag of red, white and black horizontal bars in the elaborate opening ceremony that includes athletes and coaches from all nations.
"I decided against it because, as honored as I am to represent the country, having grown up in Japan I feel like maybe I don't qualify for that as much," said Al-Yamani. "My dad brought a lot of relatives over to our house when I was younger, and I am enchanted by their clothes. I haven't seen the uniform for the opening ceremony, but it might be very ornate.
"I've always been fascinated by Arabic, and really wish I'd learned it. I speak English and Japanese, but never learned Arabic."
He visited Yemen once, "when I was very young," but remembers nothing about it. Al-Yamani said he's "taking this as an opportunity" to study the country and visit it prior to the 2020 Olympics, which had been his original goal.
"It's just crazy how much things have changed this past year," said Al-Yamani. "Coming here, I knew Michigan would be a great experience. But I was worried and concerned about being an integral part of the team.
"But this year, I have trained with some of the best swimmers and coaches, and it's given me confidence. Heading into Rio, I'm not going to feel out of place. I want to do my best and race against the best swimmers in the world."
Players Mentioned
