Sixteen year-old swimmer Zaira Forson has enjoyed quite the multi-cultural upbringing. Born in Montréal, Canada to an Irish mother and Ghanaian father, she has lived in Nevis, Saint Barthélemy, and currently lives in Spain. Right now though, she’s giving the edge to her West African heritage.
“Ireland is actually pretty cool. But culture wise, I always find Ghana more interesting,” she mused. “Whenever I go there and I look at the people in the streets and everything and all my family that I have there, it’s just a lot more lively than Ireland.”
But it’s in the pool where she feels most at home. Forson is something of a water baby — she began treading water as a one-year-old, swimming at four, and was already competing by seven. It was not love at first sight (or rather, first splash). She wasn’t remotely fond of swimming early on and actively sought ways to avoid lessons and training. The turning point came with her first taste of competition.
“It was in St. Barts. It was an outdoor 25 metre pool,” she recalls. “It was my first race and it was the 25 metre freestyle. And I also swam the 25 metre butterfly I think. I remember being super nervous. It was a lot of fun because there was music and stuff. And all I wanted was to swim as fast as possible. I ended up getting a third place medal and I was so proud.”
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The Making of A Champion
Since that first adrenaline rush, Forson has competed in every swimming event across innumerable competitions, but the butterfly is where she thrives. The teen appreciates the contrast between difficulty and beauty when competing in the swimming style.
“There's a sensation whenever you finish something butterfly where, seeing as it's so hard, if you complete it you get a sense of satisfaction,” she explains.
But perhaps there is no greater sense of contentment and fulfillment for a swimmer than earning an Olympic berth. This is arguably the pinnacle of the sport and peak of an athlete’s career. Forson was poised to earn a spot on the Ghanaian team as the youngest competitor. In early 2020, she hauled in 13 medals at the 7th Africa Zone Two Swimming and Open Water Championships in Accra, Ghana including eight individual medals (including the Women’s 200m Backstroke, 400m Freestyle, 400m Individual Medley) and five team medals. It was an impressive performance from the young swimmer but she still identified weaknesses and told journalists at the meet — one of qualifiers for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games — of her determination to improve.
“I will not be complacent after this championship because the championship was a learning room to test my capabilities. I am still young and the best thing to push Ghana swimming is through training,” Forson said in her post-competition presser.
An Olympic Dream Deferred
Only a few days later, the spread of the coronavirus rapidly triggered lockdowns globally, upending lives, and devastating industries. Uncertainty began to arise around the Games, which were eventually postponed until 2021. Restrictions and protocols left athletes unable to follow their training regimens. With disruptions to physical activities, social interaction, and training frequency, athletes reported increases in depression, lack of motivation, and difficulty exercising.
Forson sought refuge in her family, a unit that includes her parents and sister Kaya, herself a competitive swimmer and Olympian.
“Me and my sister, we're always competing. Even my father and my mother. We did exercises and we would just compete with each other,” says Forson. “Everything we did sort of turned into a competition. So it'd be like, ‘Oh, we have skipping ropes. Who can do the most double jumps? Or who can do the most of certain exercises? That was a lot of fun. It was hard because we couldn't go in the water because we didn't have a pool. We spent a couple months during the time of quarantine without being able to go in the pool.”
She stayed ready by swimming in the ocean when quarantine restrictions finally eased up. The Forson sisters watched past Olympic Games and World Championships online. But preparation would not meet the opportunity. Only a month before the Games were due to start, Forson learned that she narrowly missed making the team.
“We haven't had access to FINA (the International Swimming Federation) events because of COVID and stuff like that,” she says, breaking down the qualification criteria.“I trained insanely hard and I've gotten faster, but because of a technicality I wasn't able to. I didn't have the FINA points because my times were from two years ago, but that didn't take away from the fact that I tried really hard.
“I thought of it more as a learning experience,” she adds. “If I wasn't fast enough, or because I didn't have the events to show my improved times, I need to train more to get even faster. Next time I’m at a FINA event I can swim really fast and sort of prove myself because I really was excited to represent Ghana. And I really wish them all the best in these Olympics, even though I won't be able to help as much. But just as long as I keep training, I know that I can swim faster.”
"I am still young and the best thing to push Ghana swimming is through training."
Grace Under Pressure
With such a mature response to deep disappointment, you almost forget that Forson is still a teen balancing elite sport with education and life outside of the pool.
A typical day is bookended by rigorous swimming practices starting promptly at six in the morning and ending just shy of 10 PM. Sandwiched in between is a full day of school, meal breaks, dryland training (running, weights, and bodyweight exercises), and of course the bane of many a student’s existence: homework. To decompress, she watches Grey’s Anatomy with mum and Marvel movies with dad. The athlete in her can’t stay away from the water, even during down time, so you can often find her at the beach with friends on Saturdays after training.
But is it ever too much for a teenager to take on? “I find during exam period at school, it can be a bit overwhelming,” Forson admits. “But it's easiest if you just take it one day at a time or one exam at a time. You may have a plan but if you look at it all, sometimes it's a lot more than what you actually have to do at that moment. So if you're like, ‘Okay, right now I have swimming training,’ I focus on that. Let's forget about school. Let's train really hard. And then afterwards, when I get back home, I can be like, ‘okay, now I have to study for this.’ You sort of need checklists and just do one thing at a time. And I find that sort of helps and makes it less overwhelming.”
Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps, Regan Smith—all professional swimmers who Forson counts among athletes she admires. They’re either Olympians, world champions, record-holders, gold medallists, and legends. She would love to be part of that conversation one day as she looks ahead to Paris 2024.
She has other goals, too. Beyond sport, she dreams of a future career in medicine in the hopes of becoming a surgeon like her grandparents and aunt. She can also see herself taking up another sport, but at a more recreational level. Swimming is forever, though. “Even if I'm not swimming competitively, I'll always swim,” she affirms. “I don't think I could just leave that aside.”