Watching the Mixed 4x 50m Medley Relay on the second day of the 16th FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) in Melbourne, you might have done a double take when the Batbayar exchanged to Batbayer for Mongolia for the final two legs.
The jumbotron wasn’t making a mistake. The second half of the Mongolian team was the brother-sister duo of 18-year-old Enkhtamir handing off to his 21-year-old sister Enkhkuslen.
Their two teammates – Ariuntamir Enkh-Amgalan and Delgerkhuu Myagmar – put the team into seventh in their heat at the midpoint of the race.
Enkhtamir moved the team into sixth during his butterfly leg and Enkhkuslen's anchor freestyle leg of 25.64 held off the teams from Tanzania and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The relay's finish time of 1:49.49 was 13.14 seconds behind the USA's quartet in the morning preliminaries, but it was a new national record and they were ranked 24th among the 31 nations which fielded a medley relay team.
In the 100m freestyle event held less than an hour later, Enkhkuslen posted a 55.76, improving upon her personal best time from the 2022 Thailand National Championships. Her time from the October Nationals, 56.1 and her faster swim during Day 2 in Melbourne were Mongolian National Records. With the exception of the backstroke events, Enkhkuslen holds all of her country's national records.
"I'm happy with my results," Enkhkuslen said in her post-race interview after the two-race day that also happened to be on her 21st birthday.
The progression of Enkhkuslen’s speed across the swimming events comes with a distinct upward trend recently. Becoming a FINA Scholarship awardee may have something to do with it.
Just weeks after the 19th FINA World Championships Budapest 2022 Enkhkuslen moved from a three-lane pool in Mongolia to swim with Coach Alexander Tichonov at the FINA training program in Phuket, Thailand.
Following high school, Enkhkuslen had enrolled in a biotechnology course at university focused on her dream of being a scientist. But she had another dream that she couldn't get out of her head: to swim the 200m freestyle at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Enkhkuslen took the chance, using a gap year between her educational pursuit with her sights firmly set on
Meeting the Olympic Qualification times needed to represent Mongolia at a second Olympic Games.
Talking with Enkhkuslen, it sound like the location of Phuket with coach Tichonov is providing the ideal environment to turn dream into reality.
"I love my new team so much. Coach Alex is so supportive and friendly, he's really good at his job,” Enkhkuslen said. “My teammates from Phuket are my family and they support me and everyone on the team. Our competition times are so close and we push each other in training so we are all improving."
In Tokyo for last summer’s Olympic Games she swam in the 50m freestyle heats where her 27.29 time set a new national record. Soon after her arrival in Phuket this summer, Enkhkuslen met with Coach Tichonov to set goals and to map out the plan to achieve them.
"I really want to achieve the "B" standard in the 200m freestyle at next summer's World Aquatic Championships in Fukuoka, Japan and also for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Sometimes I think about qualifying for the semifinals at these important events."
Her best long course 200m freestyle result is still the current national record time of 2:09.52 set at the 18th Asian Games held in Jakarta & Palembang, Indonesia.
She vividly remembers one of her earliest international events, the 16th FINA World Championships 2015 in Kazan, Russia. However, she holds her highest praise for the 14th FINA World Swimming Championships 2018 in Hangzhou, China. There, the Mongolian team set the national record in the 4x 50m freestyle relay.
"The pool was great and the weather was really nice,” Enkhkuslen recalled. “This is my first time in Australia and this weather is similar to summer weather in Mongolia. Winter in Mongolia can be minus 20 degrees but summers can be nice."
Enkhkuslen's family includes her mother Myagmarsuren and father Batbayar who are both engineers. In addition to her native tongue, she learned English at a very early age and also studied Japanese in high school.
In Melbourne, her remaining racing program includes the 200m freestyle as well as the Mixed 4x100m freestyle relay. With four Mongolian swimmers in Melbourne, the same four athletes will be her relay teammates including her younger brother.