Although Majdouline El Allaoui has struggled in her first taste of the Olympics, the 23-year-old Moroccan’s performances have yielded much for her country to be proud of given the hurdles she cleared to make it to the games in Paris.
After coming last in her heat, repechage, and E/F semifinal, El Allaoui will face off against Akoko Komlanvi, a Togolese recipient of the Olympic Solidarity Scholarship, in the Women’s Single Sculls Final F on Friday.
El Allaoui’s heat was only her second time using a competition-standard rowing shell – a Filippi purchased by the Moroccan Olympic Committee after she secured her place at Paris through the African Olympic and Paralympic qualifier in Tunisia in October 2023
The rowing club used as a training base by the Moroccan National Team has only three functional single scull shells, meaning the seven or eight athletes selected to train on water spend most of their time in the coach’s zodiac, waiting to be swapped into a boat. The other half of the squad are relegated to one of the clubs’ seven rusting Concept 2s.
Even the Parisian weather was a surprise. “It was really cold,” El Allaoui said. “I didn’t expect it, actually.”
Physically, she stands out against the competition. Her rowing hero and medalist hopeful Emma Twigg towers eight inches over El Allaoui, who is two inches shorter than the average lightweight women’s double sculler competing in Paris. She has a good build for the lightweight competition, but had neither the teammates, nor access to double scull boats, to train for the Lightweight Double Sculls event.
Yet a fierce competitive streak, inspired by her parent’s divorce when she was five, has inspired outsized performances throughout her career. Divorce remains a rare and uncomfortable circumstance in conservative Morocco, and El Allaoui found that sport distracted her from the loneliness and stigma caused by coming from a broken home. She showed potential in the 400-meter hurdles and taekwondo before discovering rowing.
“I did athletics as a way to not think,” she said. “I became obsessed with sport.”
El Allaoui was selected for the women’s national team less than a month after her first strokes. Within a year, she was crowned Moroccan champion for the first time – a title she has retained ever since.
As with most African rowers, Majdouline El Allaoui is very much a beneficiary of single sculls remaining a 32-entry category. Coming into the contest, she was realistic about her chances against the likes of Twigg and the Dutch medalist Karolien Florijn. “I’m not actually thinking about the podium,” she admitted.
But she recognized that showing well in Paris could make a big difference for Moroccan rowing. Not for reasons of prestige: El Allaoui had never heard of Henley Royal Regatta, or the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. For her, doing well in Paris was all about raising awareness of Moroccan rowing in the hope of improved facilities and equipment.
“Why’d you show me this? Do you want me to cry?” El Allaoui teased when shown pictures of an Ivy League boathouse. “When you see the boats, you’ll ask…” she laughed. “How did you qualify!”
Despite having only handmade coastal sculls to practice in, El Allaoui is also an accomplished beach sprint competitor. Her and her mixed doubles partner, Ibrahim Mraghi, posted the fastest time at the 2023 African Beach Games and are optimistic about qualifying for LA 2028 where beach sprints will make its Olympic debut.
“We are going to train hard for it,” El Allaoui said. “I’m pretty sure that we will qualify.”
Chasing future Olympic ambitions in classic and coastal rowing events, Majdouline hopes to move to Europe or North America later this year to begin training professionally. Although she’s an Olympic rower, she’s never been contacted by a collegiate coach.
So, Friday likely won’t be the last time we see Majdouline El Allaoui in action at the Olympic Games.
The Women’s Single Sculls Final F takes place on Friday, August 2nd at 9:42 a.m. in Paris (3:42 a.m. EDT / 12:42 a.m. PDT)
See the September issue of Rowing News magazine for more details on El Allaoui’s story and her experience of the Olympic Games.
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