Dy­lan Carter, Jonathan Ramkissoon and Joshua Ro­many are now in the ta­per­ing phase of train­ing for the Fi­na World Ju­nior Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships sched­uled from Mon­day to Au­gust 31 in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

The trio have been train­ing to­geth­er with the Davie Nadadores Swim Team of Flori­da from the start of Au­gust. Cur­rent­ly, they are in­volved in a train­ing camp which start­ed last Mon­day in Kuwait, to ac­cli­ma­tise to Mid­dle East­ern con­di­tions.

Carter, who has been a res­i­dent of the USA since Sep­tem­ber, had a very mod­est start in the sport and then blast­ed in­to age-group star­dom in 2009 at the Carif­ta Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships in Aru­ba.

In dom­i­nant style, he won eight gold and one sil­ver medal, achieved eight Carif­ta records and eight na­tion­al records. He was al­so the most out­stand­ing male swim­mer in the 11?12 di­vi­sion, and won the Lan­don Von Kanel award (for win­ning the 200m and 400m freestyle event). All of this was achieved in four days of swim­ming.

Carter went on to be a trail­blaz­er in every Caribbean Cham­pi­onship there­after. He was a fi­nal­ist at the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games (CYG 2011) in Isle of Man.

The 17-year-old even qual­i­fied for this year's World Se­nior Cham­pi­onships held in Barcelona but opt­ed to fo­cus on World Ju­nior event in­stead. In Dubai, he is card­ed to com­pete in the 50m but­ter­fly, 50m and 100m back­stroke as well as the 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle.

Carter said: "I feel con­fi­dent go­ing in­to the meet. I will not set any lim­its to what I can achieve but I hope to come out with best times in all my events. Train­ing has been tough and the time change is still af­fect­ing us over here in Kuwait. This meet is the biggest meet of my life and it is what I have been fo­cus­ing on for the past few months, so it has be­come a big deal for me."

Ro­many joined Carter to train at Davie in mid-June. In 2006 he made his first na­tion­al team in the 9-10 age di­vi­sion at the Good­will Swim Meet in Suri­name.

In 2007, he got a chance to rep­re­sent T&T at Carif­ta in Ja­maica. While pre­dictably he did not win any in­di­vid­ual medal at this meet, this be­came the im­pe­tus for this young man to etch his place in Caribbean his­to­ry. Ro­many went on to set many na­tion­al and Caribbean records in the but­ter­fly, back­stroke and freestyle events.

In 2010, he was the on­ly na­tion­al to qual­i­fy for the Ju­nior Pan Pa­cif­ic Cham­pi­onships in Maui, Hawaii. He made the fi­nals in the 50m free event and es­tab­lished him­self on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage hav­ing record­ed one of the fastest times in the world for a 14-year-old. He al­so went on to set three new na­tion­al records in the 50m, 100m and 200m free style events. In 2011, the World Ju­niors cham­pi­onships was in Li­ma, Pe­ru; while he did not make the semi­fi­nals, he was the top 15-year-old in 50m and 100m free events and the sec­ond fastest 15-year-old in the 200m free event.

Like Carter, Ro­many was a fi­nal­ist at Com­mon­wealth Youth Games 2011. The fol­low­ing year, both Carter and Ro­many nar­row­ly missed B cuts for the 2012 Lon­don Olympics. This year, in Dubai, Ro­many is ex­pect­ed to com­pete in the 50m, 100m and 200 freestyle, 50m and 100m but­ter­fly and 100m back­stroke. Ro­many has ex­pressed con­fi­dence go­ing in­to the meet.

"This is the hard­est I have ever trained for a com­pe­ti­tion and I am op­ti­mistic. I am aim­ing to make every fi­nal and hope­ful­ly medal. Train­ing is very chal­leng­ing and a lot more than I am usu­al­ly ac­cus­tomed too," Ro­many said.

Ramkissoon has had the least com­pet­i­tive swim­ming ex­pe­ri­ence of all the ath­letes on the team. This 17-year-old made his first na­tion­al team in 2010. He qual­i­fied for World Ju­niors dur­ing the height of his fi­nal year CAPE II ex­am­i­na­tions. He be­came the first T&T ath­lete un­der 18 years to swim faster than 30 sec­onds in the 50m breast­stroke LC, and the first T&T male breast­stro­ker to qual­i­fy for World Ju­niors since its in­cep­tion in 2006.

A hold­er of two na­tion­al records, Ramkissoon is fin­ish­ing his age-group ca­reer with­out that elu­sive re­gion­al in­di­vid­ual gold medal, but the achieve­ment of World Ju­niors qual­i­fi­ca­tion far sur­pass­es that pre­cious met­al. Ramkissoon ar­rived at Davie on Au­gust 3 to train along­side and Carter and Ro­many. He would com­pete in the 50m, 100m and 200m breast­stroke events.

Ramkissoon says he is "very pumped" for the meet.

"Train­ing has been great so far with fel­low Tri­nis and the rest of the Caribbean guys," said Ramkissoon. "The meet is an­oth­er step in my swim­ming ca­reer and a link be­tween ju­nior and se­nior swim­ming. My aim is to achieve per­son­al bests in my events. Be­ing at the world cham­pi­onships is huge for me, and I am giv­ing my all for my coun­try."

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