New PB but Niall Roberts fails to make 50m butterfly semis

Two-time Olympian, Niall Roberts crashed out of the men’s 50m butterfly preliminaries on Sunday at the 15th FINA World Championships which is being held in a long course pool inside the Palau Sant Jordi, Barcelona, Spain.

The 22-year-old, who swam in lane three of heat three recorded a new personal best time of 26.39 secondswith a reaction time of 0.73 despite failing to qualifying for the semi-finals.

Niall Roberts
Niall Roberts

Roberts, who entered the event with a time of 26.70 seconds is now ranked 59th in the world out of 78 swimmers.

His teammate, Earlando McRae will face orders today in the men’s 50m breaststroke event. McRae returned to the pool two months ago and entered the championship with a time of 33.28 seconds which is the third fastest time in his heat (2).

Britany van Lange, who recently wrote the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations, swims her first event, the women’s 100m freestyle on Thursday.

Van Lange’s seed time is 1:01.62 seconds which is the fastest time for her heat (2). Behind the Olympian are Tiara Shahril-Anwar and Sameera Albitar with times of 1:04.8 seconds and 1:04.32 seconds respectively.

On the following day, McRae and Roberts are expected to compete in the men’s 50m freestyle. Roberts will look to qualify for next round of the 50m freestyle. He is 24.84 seconds is the second slowest time of heat 5.

Van Lange will bring the curtain down on Guyana’s attendance at the meet on Saturday when she competes in the 50m freestyle event. Van Lange will enter the event with a seed time of 28.80 seconds.