Fast and furious finale in the Trinidadian pool
Guernsey signed off in style with another Island record and three swimmers in finals on the last day of competition in the pool at the 2023 Commonwealth Youth Games in Trinidad.
It was Hannah Jones whose new 50m freestyle personal best of 27.27sec. beat the previous Guernsey long-course standard set by Laura Le Cras by just a hundredth of a second.
Delphine Riley also set a new PB in the fast-and-furious 'splash and dash' event while the men’s event produced one of the most exciting races of the meet, when Sarnians Luke Le Cras and Joshua Dunning were drawn in the same heat.
The pair pulled away from the field to go one-two with just 0.04sec. between them, with times of 25.44 for Dunning and 25.48 for Le Cras.
Dunning also slashed his 200m individual medley PB by a huge 8.92sec. to 2-19.54 and in the women’s equivalent Jemima Green dropped her PB to 2-32.01 while Oriana Wheeler clocked 2-28.73.
The final individual qualifying event of the morning saw the versatile Wheeler competing in her favourite event, the 200m butterfly. Taking third place in her heat, she qualified in sixth place for the final.
The final event of the morning was the 4x100m mixed medley relay, which is always exciting as the two male and two female swimmers can be used for any stroke.
For Guernsey, Green swam the backstroke, followed by Le Cras on the breaststroke, Wheeler on the butterfly and Dunning on the freestyle.
The team swam well to win their heat in 4-20.19 and drop over seven seconds on their entered time.
The evening session saw three swimmers in finals – Hannah Kennedy and Riley both produced personal bests in the 800m freestyle, dropping 6.14 and 15.39 seconds respectively, with the latter taking the honours of fifth place in the commonwealth.
Competing in her second final of the competition, Wheeler once again showed her strength over the longer events by taking sixth place in the 200m butterfly in 2-23.19.
‘The team will be heading home with many memories and lots of swapped T-shirts from other nations and many photos of their new found friends,’ said swim team manager Sara Parfit.
