-Suriname takes early lead
Team Guyana emerged from the first day of the 2008 Goodwill Championships yesterday at the Castellani Pool with six individual medals compliments of Linden Wickham, Alan Lowe and Noelle Smith.
Of the three swimmers, Smith was the most successful capturing three bronze medals and silver in the girls’ 13-14 age group.
Her second place finish was recorded in the 50-metre butterfly event where she swam a personal best of 33.74s. The three, third place finishes, were in the 50m breaststroke, 100m butterfly and 200m freestyle races.
In the 200m freestyle event Smith shattered her previous personal best time of 2:39.69s by seven seconds (2:32:12).
Alan Lowe placed third in the boys’ 15-17 200m freestyle while Linden Wickham (34:48s) was out-touched by first place finisher Kevin Panoet (34:09s) of Suriname in the boys’ 13-14 50m breaststroke event.
In the overall points’ standings, Suriname has jumped out to an early lead with 534 points while defending champions Trinidad and Tobago follow with 490.5 points.
After being in fourth position in the individual events Guyana jumped into third position with 241 points after the relays.
Barbados did not contest many of the relays because of limited swimmers and are trailing Guyana with 108 points.
While Suriname has amassed more that 50 individual medals and Trinidad more than 30, Coach of Guyana’s team Sean Baksh said that although his team has six he was extremely pleased with the performances.
“With all that our swimmers have had to overcome, I think that they have performed exceptionally well,” Baksh said.
Coach of the Suriname team Zabdai Zamuel said that his team was determined to reclaim the overall title after losing to Trinidad and Tobago last year.
‘It is going to be hard especially in the relays because some of our key swimmers are missing. Two did not come because of school commitments while two others were kept back by their parents for security reasons,’ he said.
Suriname’s 2007 dual bronze medalist at the Junior Carifta Games Chandel Domaso won the girls 15-17 200m freestyle and 100m butterfly events and placed third in the 50 m breaststroke event.
Medalists at Carifta Games held same in the year of Goodwill Championships are not allowed to participate but since Domaso did not compete at Carifta this year because of school commitments, she is eligible to compete.
Domaso was also one of the top swimmers at the recently concluded Inter-Guiana Games Swimming Championships in Suriname.
Her next events will be the 200m individual medley (IM), 100m freestyle and 50 meter backstroke.
Meanwhile, coach of the Trinidadian team Brian Wickham said that he expects a much improved performance especially from his older swimmers on the second day of the competition. He added that he was pleased with the performance of the team so far since most of the swimmers are have never represented their country before.
The event will continue tomorrow at the same venue beginning at 11am.
