Salwa Eid Naser


Salwa Eid Naser is a Nigerian-born Bahraini sprinter who specialises in the 400 meter race. She was the [2019 World championship|World Championships in Athletics|2019 World champion], with the fifth-fastest time in history of 48.14 seconds, becoming the youngest-ever champion in the event and the first woman representing an Asian nation to win it at a World Championships. At the time, the time placed her only behind the contested results of Marita Koch and Jarmila Kratochvílová. At 19, Naser was the 2017 World 400 metre silver medallist. As a member of the Bahraini mixed-gender 4 × 400 m relay team, she also won the 2019 World Championships bronze medal.
In the 400 metre sprint, Eid Naser was the 2014 Youth Olympic silver medallist and 2015 World Youth champion. At the 2015 Military World Games, she won her first senior medal, gold. At 18, she skipped the 2016 World U20 Championships, in which the winning time was 51.32 seconds, to compete with the world's best 400m sprinters at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where she placed equal ninth in the semi-finals with a time of 50.88 seconds. She is a multiple medallist of Asian Games, Asian Championships, and other top-level military and pan-regional competitions, both individually and in relays. A two-time 400 m Diamond League champion, as of December 2022, she held the eighth-fastest Asian results of all time, nine marks in the top 10, and 18 in the top 20.
Eid Naser served a competition ban from 30 June 2021 to February 2023 due to an anti-doping rule violation relating to whereabouts failures.
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Early life

Eid Naser was born Ebelechukwu Antoinette Agbapuonwu on 23 May 1998 in Onitsha, Anambra, to a Nigerian mother and Bahrain-born father. Her mother had competed as a 100 m and 200 m sprinter at school, and Eid Naser soon discovered her own sprinting abilities. In her first competitive school race at age 11, she won the 100 m and 400 m sprints. Her teacher insisted she would make a good 400 m runner, so Eid Naser started to focus on that distance. Before she was 14, the family moved to Bahrain. In 2014, she switched allegiance to Bahrain, converted to Islam, and changed her name. In 2017, when asked about her move, she said that the "past three years have been a great transition for me" and she did not wish to comment on her relationship with the Athletics Federation of Nigeria. In 2019, she said she was happy that people in Nigeria were celebrating her win.

Career

2014–2016: World youth champion

Based in Riffa in Bahrain's Southern Governorate, Eid Naser had her first success at the 2014 Arab Junior Championships, where she was a gold medallist in both the 200 m and 400 m. Following this achievement, she began to take the sport more seriously and set a new personal best of 54.50 seconds at the Asian Trials for the 2014 Youth Olympics. Eid Naser steadily improved her best further at the Olympics, recording 53.95 seconds in the first round before taking a silver medal behind Australia's Jessica Thornton with a much improved time of 52.74. The sprinter then began working with former Bulgarian athlete Yanko Bratanov, who also coached fellow Nigerian-Bahraini athletes Kemi Adekoya and Samuel Francis among others.
In May 2015, she confirmed herself as the continent's best 400 m runner in her age group with a gold medal at the Asian Youth Championships. In June, while in Bulgaria, she set national junior records in the 100 m and 200 m, clocking 11.70 seconds and 23.03 seconds respectively. Eid Naser then proved herself among the best globally in the 400 m at the World Youth Championships. A patient run in a tight hijab, what was her own decision, saw her overhaul the more favoured American Lynna Irby in the final stages of the race, and she achieved a lifetime best of 51.50 s to take the gold medal. The final came on the day after Ramadan which allowed her to eat normally before the race, after having fasted during the qualifying rounds. The gold medal made her the second-ever Bahraini woman to win a global-level title, after senior world champion Maryam Yusuf Jamal. Her tactical running was praised by USA's decathlon world record holder Ashton Eaton, who invited her on an all-expenses paid trip to train with him for three days.
Barely 17 years old, in October 2015 she took her first senior title at the Military World Games. Competing in the 400 m against 2012 Olympians Bianca Răzor and Nataliya Pyhyda, she improved to win a gold medal with a world youth-leading and national under-20 record time of 51.39 seconds, becoming the youngest ever winner of that title. This result was the second-fastest Asian under-18—and 10th fastest world U18—time in history.
Eid Naser had since been coached by Nigerian ex-pat John George Obeya, who had been based in Bahrain for several years.
At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the 18-year-old made her next progress and won her heat with a personal best of 51.06 seconds. In the semi-final, she improved even further running 50.88, but placed equal ninth overall and did not advance by one place and 0.13; her time ranked her sixth in the final results. Just a week earlier, Naser twisted her ankle, which had first been weakened when she was struck by a car aged six. It opened up a fracture and she was advised not to compete, but she wanted to in her first Olympics. After the Games, she had to take three months rest to treat her leg.

2017–2019: World silver medallist and champion

While still a junior, Eid Naser claimed the silver medal in the 400 m event at the 2017 London World Championships with a new personal best of 50.06 seconds, after winning and each time improving in her heat and semi-final, finally lowering her personal best by a massive 0.82. The final took place on a wet surface during light rain. She was last midway through the race, and when she turned the final corner she was still only fourth, eventually beating Allyson Felix by 0.02 and being beaten only by Phyllis Francis. Shaunae Miller-Uibo had been leading until the last 30 metres when she got the staggers and dropped from first to fourth. At age 19, it made Eid Naser the youngest woman ever to reach the podium over 400 m at a World Championships; she also thrice broke the Bahraini national record. Less than two weeks later, she won in the distance at the Diamond League meeting in Birmingham, and then set an even better personal best of 49.88 seconds in Brussels a week later, securing second place overall in the Diamond Race. This result, the third-fastest world under-20 time in history and an Asian U20 record, would have given her first place in London.
Since November 2017, she has been coached by Dominican Jose Ludwig Rubio.
In 2018, Eid Naser competed at seven 400 m Diamond League events, winning six of them and achieving six marks below 50 seconds. On 30 June, at the Paris Meeting, she won with a new lifetime best of 49.55 seconds, breaking an Asian record set in 1993 by Ma Yuqin. On 20 July, at the Herculis meet in Monaco, she greatly improved her PB in a time of 49.08 seconds to finish second just behind Shaunae Miller-Uibo, who set the circuit record with her result 48.97. It was the fastest women's 400 m race run since 2009, and also the first since 1996 in which two women went below 49.10 seconds. In August, Eid Naser won the race at the Asian Games in Jakarta. On 30 August, she also won the 4 × 100 m relay final and went on to take silver in the 4 × 400 m relay. She flew to Brussels later that night and won the Diamond League 400 m title just hours later in 49.33 seconds. A few days later, the sprinter won also Continental Cup held in Ostrava running 49.32 seconds. In 2018 in total, she won 10 out of her 11 400 m races and recorded seven sub-50-second clockings.
During the 2019 Asian Championships in Doha, Qatar, she claimed gold medals for both the 200 m and 400 m, and also for the 4 × 400 m relay, 4 × 400 m mixed relay, and a bronze for the 4 × 100 m relay. In the 2019 Diamond League events, she competed in and won five 400 m races taking her second circuit championship. The sprinter clocked her best time of 49.17 seconds setting a meet record on 5 July at the Athletissima in Lausanne, Switzerland.
On 3 October 2019, Eid Naser became the 400 metres world champion at the Doha World Championships in Qatar, the youngest ever and also the first Asian female winner of that title. She improved her personal best, set one year earlier, by a massive 0.94 seconds, and her result of 48.14 seconds had been the fastest since 1985 – that is for 34 years, the second-fastest at a World Championships, and the third-fastest of all time. This had been her fifth race in five days and the top five women all set PBs. She additionally took the bronze medal for the 4 × 400 m mixed relay, which set an Asian record. During the 2019 Military World Games, the sprinter finished as the gold medallist in her signature event, extending her unbeaten streak in the event to 14 straight finals and a bronze one in the 4 × 100 m relay. Eid Naser finished the 2019 season unbeaten.

2020–2022: Two year anti-doping regulations suspension

In June 2020, the Athletics Integrity Unit issued a provisional suspension to Eid Naser due to whereabouts failures over a 12-month period, including one filing failure and three missed tests. In October 2020, a World Athletics Disciplinary Tribunal dismissed the charges and lifted the suspension. However World Athletics and WADA appealed this decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. On 30 June 2021, CAS upheld the appeal, issuing a two-year competition ban to Naser that ran from June 2021 to February 2023 (taking into account credit for the provisional suspension. All her results from 25 November 2019 to 30 June 2021 were also disqualified.

2023-present: Comeback and Olympic medallist

At the 2024 Summer Olympics, Eid Naser won the silver medal in the women's 400 m final behind Marileidy Paulino. She clocked a time of 48.53 seconds, which was the second-fastest time of her career.
In November 2024, it was announced that Eid Naser had signed up for the inaugural season of the Michael Johnson founded Grand Slam Track.

Recognition

She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 Women of 2019.

Achievements

''Information from World Athletics profile unless otherwise noted. Last updated on 15 March 2021.''

Personal bests

Lap times of 48.14 seconds PB run

Season's best


Year400 mNotes
201452.74—
201551.39 1.352.6, 2nd Asia U18 all time, 10th U18 all time
201650.88 0.511.0
201749.88 1.002.0 ' ', 3rd U20 all time
201849.08 0.801.6'
201948.14 0.941.9 ', 3rd all time
2020–22———
202349.78——
202448.53 1.252.5
202548.19 0.340.7




Circuit performances

Wins and titles

Videos