Yesterday’s final day of the 2007 National Swimming Championships ended as it began with more records falling and lots of exciting races.
The final day of competition began suitably with Henk Lowe dominating the field to win the 13-14 year-old, 400m individual medley, which is a combination of the butterfly, breast stroke, back stroke and freestyle in that order.
Lowe continued his outstanding performance throughout the day and was eventually adjudged the male champion swimmer in the 13-14 age group.
Excitement was a fever pitch as Britany van Lange and Soroya Simmons prepared to go head-to-head in the girls’ 9-10 year-old 100m backstroke event.
They did not disappoint.
Van Lange swam a time of 1:30:06 to dispose of the 1:37:21s record that she set last year.
Soroya followed not far behind also breaking the old record as she finished with a time of 1:33:51s.
Ronaldo Rodrigues also claimed a record at this year’s championships when he set the new mark of 3:07.02s in the boys’ 11-12 year-old 200m breaststroke event to erase the previous record set by Linden Wickham who is no longer eligible for that category.
However, Wickham entered the pool for the very next race and re wrote his name in the record books by setting the 13-14 year-old 200m backstroke record.
National champion Earlando Mc Rae then joined in on the record breaking excitement just seconds after to break the 200m backstroke record after turning in a time of 2:49:02s.
Niall Roberts in his first year of competition in the very tough 15-17 age category had his work cut out for him as Mc Rae and Jamaal Sobers dominated the category in what is their final year.
Roberts, however, edged out Sobers (26:74s) to secure a marginal second place finish 0.29 seconds behind Mc Rae (25:26s) in the boys’ 15-17 50 metre freestyle event where he swam 25:57s.
Eventual girls’ 9-10 champion van Lange then decided to visit the record books again which she seemed to do for almost every event that she competed, and battled fiercely with Simmons to capture the 50m freestyle event.
Just as in all of their previous races, this one went done to the wire with van Lange finishing in 34:29s and Simmons finishing 34:94s both faster than the previous record which incidentally Van Lange held.
Eleven year-old Natoya Culpepper of Riverview on the Essequibo River, stunned her competition throughout that championships claiming the last of her three victories yesterday in the girls’ 11-12 year-old 50m freestyle event which she finished in the time of 34:31s.
For a first-timer at these championships, Culpepper’s performance was remarkable and she showed drastic improvement from the national schools’ swimming championship held less than a month ago.
Noelle Smith emerged as the girls’ 13-14 champion which came as no surprise and she wrapped up her individual title with two wins in the 50m freestyle and the 100m backstroke events on the final day of competition.
Smith produced impressive times despite the lack of competitors in the category.
At just five-years-old Sarah King was able to claim the girls’ eight and under title, while Athena Foo became the 11-12 year-old champion.
Kristyl Robinson won the girls’ 15-17 category while Griffith Benjamin was adjudged the under-8 champion.
Nathanael King was adjudged `king’ of the 9-10 category; Rodrigues won the boys’ 11-12 category and Sobers the boys’ 15-17 category.
