Guyana’s 26-member team ended with 23 medals and in the cellar position while defending champions Suriname were officially declared overall winners, late Sunday evening, during the closing ceremony of the Goodwill Swimming Championships, at the Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel, Kingston.
Guyana’s medal breakdown shows that 13 of the medals were gold, three were silver and seven bronze.
The above pales in comparison to the 145 medals, 66 of which were gold, attained by Suriname in the run up to their 1507 points.
Suriname also walked away with boys and girls’ team titles which were won with 812 and 695 points respectively. Suriname also grabbed 41 silver and 38 bronze medals.
Kenneth MacDonald, coach of the Suriname team, expressed satisfaction with his team’s performance in view of the fact that the team participated with tow of their relay teams.
“We didn’t expect to do this well because we are missing two relay teams for the boys 15 – 17 team and the girls 15 – 17,” Mc Donald said.
Olympian Britany van Lange was the team’s silver lining walking away with the girls’ 15 – 17 age group champion title by virtue of medaling in every event that she participated in. Fresh off participating at the recently concluded 2012 London Olympics, van Lange carried the weight of Guyana’s medals with a whopping nine individual medals and leading the girls 15 – 17 girls’ relay team to three gold medals.
The 15-year-old Olympian won the 100m breaststroke in a record breaking 1:01.53s destroying the three-year-old previous record of 1:02.34s held by Trinidad’s Makayla Armstrong. Van Lange also erased Sonya Jaggernauth’s 50m freestyle record of 27.89s when she won the event on Sunday last in a time of 27.74s.
She also scored gold while clocking personal best timings in the 100m butterfly (1:11.81s), the 200m IM (2:39.05s), the 50m breaststroke (37.00s), the 50m backstroke (33.09s) and the 50m butterfly (31.65s), while her other gold medals were from the 200m freestyle (2:14.54s) and the 100m freestyle (1:01.53s). Van Lange earned bronze in the 100m backstroke (1:14.26s)
The girls 15 – 17 relay team, which also comprised Athena Gaskin, Soroya Simmons and Steffi DeNobrega, walked away with a clean sweep of all the relay gold medals winning the 400m medley (5:10.54s) on the first day then following up by taking the 4x100m relay (4:34.65s) and the 4x50m relay (2:00.25s).
Guyana’s other gold medal came from Onika George who shared the girls’ 13 – 14 50m freestyle first place position with Suriname’s Valery Amstelveen after both finished in 29.22s, a personal best for George. George also earned a silver medal in the 50m backstroke where she achieved another personal best having clocked 33.66s.
The other two silver medals for the Guyana team came from the Gaskin siblings, with Athena gaining second in the 100m breaststroke (1:25.09s) and her brother Hannibal taking second in the boys’ 13 – 14 200m freestyle (2:11.09s).
Athena also earned bronze in the 50m breaststroke (38.71s), and the 50m butterfly (33.97s).
Hannibal was one of the four boys – the others being Omar Adams, Omari Dunn and Selwyn Miller – who won bronze in the boys’ 13 – 14 40m medley (4:52.97s), the 4x100m relay (4:15.10s) and the 4x50m relay (1:54.53s).
The 514 points assembled by the Guyana team saw the boys gaining 239 points and the girls 275 points. Barbados received no challenge for their third place finish, ending with 898.5 points, 379 points for the boys’ team and 519.5 for the girls’ team.
Overall second place finisher, of the Championships, Trinidad failed in their hope of walking away with the team title this year after finishing 63.5 points behind Suriname. Despite being the only team to have the maximum 40 athletes, Trinidad ended with just 128 medals that included 27 gold, 52 silver and 49 bronze; the boys’ team scored 767 points while the girls’ team accumulated 676.5 points.
Notwithstanding overall performance, head coach Edric Hargreaves described his team’s performance as “well put together”, he also said he team performed beyond original expectations.
“Our performance was very well put together. We did a lot of things. We tried our best. I am very confident that we had a lot of good swims. Honestly, overall we had a good team, it was a good performance.
Yes [we performed] as expected, and beyond because at the end of the day a lot of these kids never went to competitions like this so a lot of them rise to the occasion and they performed at their very best and that’s what we look at from our side. I would say every year for us is better, because at the end of the day you know we are always rising our swimmers to the higher expectations and most of these kids they move onto CARIFTA and bigger games, so I would say every year we keep rising.”
