Farida Osman

People Living

فريدة عثمان

Cairo

Egyptian swimmer, born in Indianapolis, United States, in 1995 and raised in Cairo. She won three World Championship bronze medals in the 50 m butterfly (2017, 2019 and 2024), holds the African butterfly records, and is described as the fastest female swimmer in Egypt and Africa.

Depth

At a glance

Roles
swimmer
Region
Egypt & Nile
Identifiers
Wikidata

Life in time

1900192519501975200020252050
The Colonial Era · The Contemporary Era · The Modern Era Contemporaries: Abbas-Ali Amid Zanjani · Abbas Kiarostami · Abd al-Aziz al-Ghumari · Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda · Abd al-Rahman Badawi

In space

Cairo

Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph

Place in the story

    Unknown (unknown)

    Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.

    In the Modern Islam Browser

    Modern Islam BrowserFigures of the last fifty years1995

    Summary

    Farida Hisham Osman is an Egyptian swimmer specialising in butterfly and freestyle, born in Indianapolis, United States, on 18 January 1995 and raised in Cairo. 1 2 She has won three World Championship bronze medals in the 50 m butterfly and holds the African records in the butterfly events; she is described as the fastest female swimmer in Egypt and Africa. 1

    Early life

    Osman was born in Indianapolis to two dentists, Hisham Osman and Randa Elsalawy, and raised in Cairo. She began swimming at the age of five at the Gezira Sporting Club alongside her brother Ahmed, attended French schools in Cairo and the Cairo American College, and after a spell in synchronised swimming returned to racing at eleven, winning every national 50 m and 100 m freestyle and butterfly title for her age. 1 At twelve she was the youngest member of Egypt's team at the 2007 Pan Arab Games in Cairo and broke the Arab record in the 50 m butterfly, the youngest Egyptian and Arab swimmer to win the event. 1

    Career

    Osman became world junior champion in the 50 m butterfly at Lima in 2011, winning in a championship record of 26.69. 1 She raced at the London 2012 Olympics, and at the 2013 World Championships in Barcelona became the first Egyptian ever to reach a World Championships final, finishing seventh in the 50 m butterfly after setting an African record of 26.12 in the semi-finals. 1 Swimming for the University of California, Berkeley under coach Teri McKeever, she won NCAA titles in 2017. 1 Her three senior world bronze medals in the 50 m butterfly came at Budapest 2017 — where her 25.39 was another African record — Gwangju 2019 and Doha 2024; she also competed at the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympics. 1

    Sources

    • The source entities cited above, registered under data/source/.

    Connections

    Explore the connections

    Lived in
    Cairo

    People and things also explored

    Al-Azhar Mosque· Bab al-Futuh, Cairo· Bab al-Nasr, Cairo· Bab Zuwayla, Cairo· Joseph's Well (Bir Yusuf), Cairo Citadel· Citadel of Cairo (Citadel of Salah al-Din)· The Dar al-Hikma of Cairo· Funerary complex of Sultan al-Ashraf Inal, Cairo

    Sources

    1. Farida Osman — English Wikipedia
    2. Farida Osman — Wikidata
    • Farida Osman — Arabic Wikipedia
    • Farida Osman — Urdu Wikipedia
    Cite this page

    islam.museum contributors. “Farida Osman”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/farida-osman/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-06.

    Improve this page on GitHub · Report an error · JSON

    Wing

    People

    Prophets, companions, scholars, rulers, scientists, poets, travelers: women and men who shaped the story.
    Related

    Al-Azhar Mosque

    Al-Azhar at Cairo: founded by the Fatimids as the mosque of their da'wa, then turned by the vizier Ya'qub ibn Killis in 378 into a university teaching the sciences and letters — from a pulpit reserved for the Fatimid call into one of Egypt's foremost centres of learning beside the mosques of Amr, Ibn Tulun and al-Hakim.