Seungwon Kim wins silver medal in women's 100m backstroke at Dakar Youth Olympics

Kim Seung-won (16, Gyeonggi Sports High School), the next generation star of Korean women's swimming, announced the bright future of Korean swimming by winning a silver medal at the 2026 Dakar Summer Youth Olympics, the first held on the African continent.

Seungwon Kim won a silver medal in the women's 100m backstroke final at the 4th Summer Youth Olympic Games held in Dakar, Senegal on the 3rd (local time) with a time of 1 minute 00.25 seconds.

Kim Seung-won, who passed the preliminaries on this day with a time of 1 minute 01.06 seconds, demonstrated his concentration and game management ability to beat his own record by 0.81 seconds in the final.

The record was only 0.27 seconds behind Daria Mariuka Silisteanu (Romania, 59.98 seconds), who won the gold medal.

The bronze medal went to Cecilia Dieleke (Argentina) with a time of 1:00.83.

Kim Seung-won received early attention as a world-class prospect by winning a silver medal in the women's 50m backstroke at the 2025 World Junior Aquatics Championships held in Otopeni, Romania last year.

He is also a promising athlete who holds the Korean record of 27.71 seconds in the event.

At the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, Kim Seung-won won a total of four bronze medals in individual events such as the 50m backstroke and 100m backstroke, as well as the women's 400m medley relay and the 400m mixed medley relay, proving her competitiveness on the Asian stage.

After completing the Asian Games schedule, he immediately participated in the Youth Olympics and climbed to the podium on a stage where youth athletes from around the world competed, raising expectations for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Team leader Park Se-jin, who accompanied the team as a coach to this competition and supported his performance, said, "Seung-won Kim is a player who is sincere in his attitude toward training and has a very strong will to find and improve on his own shortcomings."