No one expected the 18-year-old  Ahmed Hafnaoui to win the gold medal in 400 meters freestyle Swimming at the Tokyo Games when he squeaked into the final by fourteenth hundred and being the slowest to qualify.

However, the teenager stunned everyone with the gold on the final round finishing it off in 3 minutes and 43.26 seconds.

“I believed it when I touched the wall and I saw myself first,” he said. “I was so surprised.”

“When I hit the water, I was just thinking about the medal, not the time,” Hafnaoui said.

Australia’s Jack McLoughlin earned silver and American Kieran Smith took bronze. The top three were separated by less than a second after the eight-lap race.

The teen, who trains in the capital, Tunis, is the North African country’s fourth Olympic gold medallist. He is the second-youngest athlete from an African nation to win a swimming gold.