With a smile and dance, para-swimmer Taliso Engel overcomes audio-visual impairment

SINGAPORE – Even with all the misfortunes he has faced, Taliso Engel is living up to his family name by facing every challenge with an angelic smile and a can-do spirit.

The cheery German, who was born with a congenital visual impairment, has absolutely dominated the men’s 100m breaststroke SB13 event. Since his first win at the World Para Swimming Championships in London in 2019, he has not lost in this event with golds at Madeira 2022 and Manchester 2023, as well as the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Paralympics.

At the ongoing world meet at OCBC Aquatic Centre in Singapore, the 23-year-old blitzed the field on Sept 22 to retain his world title in a world-record 1min 1.69sec, shaving 0.15sec off his previous mark.

On Sept 25, he finished fourth in the 50m freestyle S13 final in 24.21sec, behind Ukraine’s winner Oleksii Virchenko (23.31) and Russian neutral athletes Vitalii Tsybriuk (23.58) and Egor Shchitkovskii (23.93).

He told The Straits Times: “I feel very good, because I was 13 weeks out of training because of a TV show I did this year. That was a pretty long time and so it’s amazing that I have come back to my old form this quick.”

In February, Engel swopped his swimming trunks for dancing shoes for German programme Let’s Dance. Partnering Lithuania’s Patricija Ionel, the pair tackled various styles such as waltz, tango and quickstep and finished a creditable second, proving that he can excel in whatever he puts his mind to.

It is the same with swimming, which he started from age four for “safety reasons, because my mum was very worried about me with my visual impairment and she wanted me to be able to swim”.

He added: “There was no thought about professional swimming, but I always had fun in the water, so I kept going, kept improving, increasing my training. And I had more fun with swimming, so I quit football and kept swimming. I don’t know how I became so good at breaststroke; maybe I just have a feel for that after doing it all my life.”

Engel is also a man of many other talents and interests – he also enjoys playing football, skateboarding, reading, strumming the guitar, and listening to techno and hip-hop. All that while juggling an online degree with a local sports science university.

With a hearty laugh, he asked about how his hobbies became known, before adding: “It’s all about time management and just doing the things you really want to do. I don’t want to do my stuff for university all the time because it annoys me, but I try to find time for the things I need and want to do.”

Engel’s positive personality belies some of the hardships he has encountered. In 2023, he lost all hearing in his right ear during a training camp in Turkey. He shared that he had an inflammation in his ear but could only “go to a good doctor in Germany only 1½ weeks later and it was already too late” as his eardrum had ruptured.

He said: “It was a pretty tough time for me, because as a visually impaired person, it’s very hard to lose my hearing too. It is super difficult to sit together with friends in a restaurant in a relaxed atmosphere, because I always have to pay attention to where I’m sitting in order to understand as many people as possible. And it’s super stressful with music in the background and lots of voices.

“But I still try to get through that, try to have a nice time and stay positive.”

His attitude has helped him become a top swimmer alongside other German world champions such as 1,500m freestyle specialist Florian Wellbrock and Olympic gold medallist (400m freestyle) Lukas Martens.

He said: “For a long time, we were not that big of a swimming nation, but it’s been improving in recent years and we are coming back to winning more medals. For me, I always want to improve as an athlete and my main goal now is to keep getting faster.”

The fifth day of competition at the world championships saw two more world records in the pool.

American Katie Kubiak won the women’s 50m freestyle S4 final in 36.83sec to better German Tanja Scholz’s 2022 mark of 36.92, with Brazilians Lidia Vieira da Cruz (38.98) and Patricia Pereira dos Santos (41.02) taking silver and bronze respectively.

Brazil’s Gabriel Bandeira then clinched the men’s 200m individual medley SM14 final in 2:05.40 to eclipse Canadian Nicholas Bennett’s 2024 mark of 2:05.97. Britain’s Rhys Darbey (2:05.84) also went under the previous mark to finish second, while Bennett (2:06.30) was third.

Meanwhile, Singaporean Toh Wei Soong finished fifth in the men’s 50m butterfly S7 final in 31.60sec, as the podium was filled by Ukraine’s Andrii Trusov (28.95), Colombia’s Carlos Serrano Zarate (29.36) and South Africa’s Christian Sadie (30.11).