Nigel Si­mon

T&T's Open Wa­ter swim­mer Chris­t­ian Mars­den lived-up to his pre-race hype when he took gold in the 15-17 boys Open Wa­ter swim at Carlisle Bay, the fi­nal day of the 30th Carif­ta Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship in Bar­ba­dos, yes­ter­day.

It was the lone Open Wa­ter medal for the T&T con­tin­gent to place fifth with 15 points. The oth­er T&T Open Wa­ter par­tic­i­pants were Sha­nia David who was eighth in the 15-17 girls age-group while the the trio of Gabriel By­noe (sev­enth), Gra­ham Cha­toor (eighth) and Sab­ri­na David (eight) had low plac­ings in their re­spec­tive 13-14 races.

On Tues­day night at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre in Wildey, T&T failed to add to its gold medal haul of 12 but picked up four sil­ver and two bronze to end with 38 medals over­all (12 gold, 13 sil­ver, 13 bronze) and third spot with 494.5 points.

Ba­hamas kept hold of its ti­tle with 756 points and 54 medals (29 gold, 17 sil­ver, 8 bronze) while host Bar­ba­dos was sec­ond with 642.5 points and 52 medals, its most in his­to­ry (30 gold, 12 sil­ver, 10 bronze).

Lead­ing the way for T&T on the fourth and fi­nal night of swim­ming was boys 13-14 Age-Group High Point sec­ond placed fin­ish­er Jeron Thomp­son, who picked up sil­ver medals in the 50-me­tre freestyle (25.19 sec­onds) and 100m back­stroke (1:10.40 min­utes).

The oth­er sil­ver win­ners on the night for the T&T con­tin­gent un­der the guid­ance of first year head coach Cha­beth Haynes were Ami­ra Pil­grim (115-15 girls 50m freestyle in 27.31); Jah­mia Harley, the 11-12 girls High Point bronze fin­ish­er, in the 200m back­stroke in 2:38.64, and the 15-17 boys 4x50m freestyle re­lay com­bi­na­tion of Justin Sam­lals­ingh, Jabari Bap­tiste, Os­aze Ri­ley and Cana­da-based Adri­an Goin in 1:36.49.

Harley al­so added a bronze in the 400m freestyle (4:53.22) and Bap­tiste did like­wise, in the 15-17 boys 50m freestyle in 24.26.

USA-based Ty­la Mar­tin, who won three in­di­vid­ual gold medals for T&T, al­so got third spot in the 15-17 girls Age-Group High Point com­pe­ti­tion.

Mean­while, US and Olympic coach Todd Schmitz, the per­son­al coach of Amer­i­can mul­ti-Olympic and World gold medal­list Mis­sy Franklin will be­gin a three-day clin­ic to­day at the Dr Joao Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence Swim­ming Pool, Ma­coya as well as St Joseph's Col­lege, St Joseph.

Speak­ing on the team's ar­rival at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day, head coach Haynes, said, "We were glad to im­prove on our fifth place fin­ish last year.

"It was a tough meet and our team fea­tured quite a few new­com­ers how­ev­er, the ex­pe­ri­enced and sea­soned swim­mers were able to pull out big points in cru­cial events for us to se­cure third spot."

Look­ing ahead Haynes said she was sure the younger swim­mers gained a lot from the ex­pe­ri­ence as well as from the more se­nior lo­cal and for­eign based swim­mers over this tour.

Fi­nal re­sults

Fi­nal medal ta­ble

Team G S B Tot

Bar­ba­dos 30 12 10 52

Ba­hamas 29 17 8 54

T&T 12 13 13 38

Aru­ba 10 13 12 35

Guade­loupe 8 11 6 25

Suri­name 6 8 7 21

Cay­man Is­lands 5 4 5 14

Bermu­da 4 8 10 22

Grena­da 3 1 6 10

Ja­maica 2 9 14 25

Fi­nal points ta­ble

Team Points

1 Ba­hamas 756

2 Bar­ba­dos 642.5

3 T&T 494.5

4 Guade­loupe 478

5 Ja­maica 466

6 Aru­ba 348.5

7 Cay­man Is­lands 289

8 Suri­nam 271

9 Bermu­da 259

10 Mar­tinique 229