Guyana’s youngest Olympian, Aleka Persaud, swam her personal best en route to smashing the national record in the women’s 50m freestyle event yesterday at the ongoing Olympic Games.
However, the heroics of the 15-year-old was not enough to propel her into the semi-finals.
Swimming out of lane four at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre, Persaud entered heat four seeded first of eight entrants with a time of 28.10s.
In her debut of the Games of the 32nd Olympiad, the potential future Olympic medal prospect finished a close second in the heat in the 27.76s (new national record) to 29-year-old Judith Meauri of Papua New Guinea who won the heat in 27.56s.
Note: Persaud erased 2016 Rio Olympian, Jamila Sanmoogan’s record of 28.26s set in April 1, 2016 at the South American Championships which was staged in Paraguay.
There were 11 heats and only the fastest 16 made it to the semis. At 15, the fastest local female 50m freestyle swimmer surely has a bright future ahead of her once the necessary investments are made to her talent.
Elsewhere at the Olympic Stadium, Jasmine Abrams finished seventh of eight starters in heat 7 of the women’s 100m. Her pedestrian timing of 11.49s ended her debut run at the Games. The 27-year-old had a disappointing showing, running way slower than her personal best of 11.19s recorded in April.
The other athletes who donned national colours at the event, boxer Keevin Allicock and table tennis player, Chelsea Edghill respective podium dreams ended with losses in their preliminary matches last Friday. So did the dreams of swimmer, Andrew Fowler on Tuesday.
Fowler failed to advance to the semi-final round following his first 100m freestyle event. He finished a disappointing fourth place with a time of 55.23s in Heat-1 after he was seeded first with the fastest entry time.
Guyana’s hopes of a podium finish at the event now rests on the shoulders of Emanuel Archibald (100m) and Jasmine’s sister, Aliyah Abrams (400m).
Archibald was scheduled to get into the blocks last night at 10:30pm in the preliminary round of his event while Aliyah will spring into action on Tuesday.
