Five years ago, Mohamed Aan Hussain lost the opportunity to join the junior national team by a 1-second difference. This mere 1 second was what allowed him to shape his future swimming career. From that moment onwards, without looking back, he has won back-to-back competitions, awards, etc., and recently he participated in the Swimming Association of Maldives Champion of Champions Tournament and won the “Fenmuthuge Sharaf” award.

Dr. Hussain Haleem (Kuda Hussain) who is a famous marathon runner and prosecutor general Hussain Shameem both mentioned that Aan is someone who has the talent and ability to bring multiple awards and medals to the country in swimming.

Aan first started swimming when he was only 8 years old. He said that he started swimming because he thought that it was a necessity, so he learned at the Maldives Lifeguard Association under the guidance of Ahmed Firaas Afeef.

Aan: “I first participated in a tournament when I was in grade 3. I even got first place in that tournament. That was truly my motivation to swim competitively. After that, even coach Firaas had suggested me to carry on with swimming”

Aan lost a chance to join the junior national team in 2016. But instead of seeing it as a step backward, he took it as a lesson and looked for a fresh start.

In 2019, he participated in the Indian Ocean Island Games (IOIG) under Maldives Senior team. And in 2019, in the national trials, he swam faster than the national record time in 4 events. This was 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, 400m freestyle, and 100m backstroke.

The next challenge for him was that there were no competitions in 2020 due to Covid 19. He had to continue his training while staying at home.

After the break due to Covid 19, the first swimming competition held by the swimming association was the recent Champion of Champions tournament. Participants were selected from the most-well-performed swimmers in the 2019 events.

17-year-old Aan had participated in 15 events and earned 14 gold medals and 1 silver medal. He got silver medal in 200m butterfly event.

He got gold medals in 400m individual medley, 100m and 200m backstroke, 100m breaststroke, 100m butterfly, 50m backstroke, 200m freestyle, 50m breaststroke, 400m freestyle, 100m and 200m individual medley, 50m butterfly and lastly, 50m and 100m freestyle.

Champion of Champions was special to Aan because he earned the most honorable award that a swimmer can get, which is the “Fenmuthuge Sharaf”. This is an award that will always be special in his career. Along with this, Aan participated in the very recent Bar 2000 Faramanthaa Water Sports Tournament and had been selected as the best male athlete in the whole competition.