PARIS — The swimmer in Lane Seven was twenty-four months old when the most accidentally famous athlete in the history of Africa nearly drowned in the Olympic pool. That was in Sydney, Australia, in the antipodal springtime of the year 2000, an unforgettable afternoon when respect lapped ridicule and losing turned out to be the greatest victory of all.

The hero that day Down Under was an underqualified freestyler from Equatorial Guinea, a malevolent but oil-soaked dictatorship that is the poorest little rich country in the world. Eric Moussambani Malonga had learned to swim in a tropical river, then honed his skills, such as they were, in a hotel pool that was only twenty metres long. In Sydney, compelled to swim five times that far, he almost went down under himself.