T&T swim­mer Dy­lan Carter says his red-hot start at the first FI­NA World Cup Swim­ming Se­ries stop in Berlin was fu­eled by miss­ing three ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al medals by less than one-tenth of a sec­ond this sum­mer.

Com­pet­ing at the FI­NA World Aquat­ics Cham­pi­onships in June in Bu­dapest, Hun­gary, the 26-year-old Carter missed the podi­um in the 50 me­tres but­ter­fly by just .06 sec­onds. At the Com­mon­wealth Games in Ju­ly in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land, he was .01 sec­onds away from a bronze medal in the 50m but­ter­fly and .08 sec­onds from hard­ware in the 50m freestyle, al­so in Eng­land.

Fed up with the string of close calls, Carter went back to the draw­ing board with his coach Dex­ter Brown at home in Trinidad and re­turned “with a lot of fire.”

That spark was on full dis­play in Berlin at the Eu­ropa Sports Park, SSE Are­na, as the sprint spe­cial­ist made a state­ment with three gold medals in the 50m freestyle, 50m back­stroke, and 50m but­ter­fly.

Carter’s first ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al vic­to­ries came against strong com­pe­ti­tion as he had to out­du­el Aus­tralian Kyle Chalmers and France’s Flo­rent Man­au­dou in the 50m freestyle, Italy’s Thomas Cec­con in the 50m back­stroke, and an equal­ly red-hot South African Chad Le Clos in the 50m but­ter­fly. Along the way, he set a pair of na­tion­al records in the 50m freestyle and 50m back­stroke.

On Fri­day in his first event, a Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia grad­u­ate Carter ripped the first sub-21 swim of his ca­reer to over­come a stacked field in the men’s 50m freestyle fi­nal, blast­ing his way to a time of 20.77.

In ad­di­tion to go­ing well un­der his pre­vi­ous best of 21.09, Carter al­so broke a long­stand­ing T&T na­tion­al record, tak­ing out Olympic bronze medal­list George Bovell‘s 20.82 from 2012.

He was fol­lowed to the wall by Chalmers , who won this race in three out of the four World Cup stops last year, while Man­au­dou, the for­mer world record hold­er and Olympic cham­pi­on.

Chalmers clocked 21.04, just off his win­ning time from the open­ing Berlin stop in 2021 (21.01), while Man­au­dou hit the wall in 21.05.

In the morn­ing heats ses­sion, Carter was al­so the top qual­i­fi­er in 21.08 sec­onds in win­ning heat 11while Man­au­dou was sec­ond fastest af­ter win­ning heat nine in 21.22, with Chalmers, sec­ond in heat 11 in 21.30 for third best over­all.

On Sat­ur­day in the 50m back­stroke Carter (23.15) made it 2-for-2 when he held off Cec­con (23.22) and Cana­da’s Javier Aceve­do (23.24), set­ting a new na­tion­al record in the process. He low­ered his pre­vi­ous mark of 23.19 from the 2018 FI­NA Short Course World Cham­pi­onships.

Once again, Carter al­so topped the field in the morn­ing heats with an over­all best time of 23.41 in win­ning heat sev­en, with Cec­con (23.48), the win­ner of heat six, and Man­au­dou (23.51), and Acevdeo (23.54) com­plet­ing the top four.

And on Sun­day, in his fi­nal event, Carter made it 3-for-3 in sprint events with his 50m but­ter­fly vic­to­ry in 22.13, just off his life­time bets of 21.98 as he edged Le Clos (23.22) for the gold medal by less than a tenth of a sec­ond while Ital­ian Mat­teo Ri­v­ol­ta got bronze in 22.38.

Carter again was the fastest in the morn­ing heats in 22.61 on en­route to win­ning heat nine, just ahead of USA’s Tom Shields (22.63), and Mar­ius Kusch of Ger­many who clocked 22.64, both in heat eight.

Speak­ing af­ter his win on Sun­day, Carter said jok­ing­ly, “Now I just need to learn how to swim breast­stroke.

“It gives me some con­fi­dence. I’m rac­ing the best in the world here, so hope­ful­ly, I can stay up here.”

With the vic­to­ry, Carter’s tal­ly of 57.3 points moves him in­to sec­ond place in the over­all stand­ings be­hind South African Matt Sates’ 58,3 while USA’s Nick Frank (57), Le Clos (56.4), Cham­bers (53.4), and Cec­con (52.6) com­plete the men’s swim­mers who amassed over 50 points for $12,000, $10,000, $8,000, $6,000, $5,500 and $5,400 re­spec­tive­ly in prize mon­ey.

At the end of the se­ries, the swim­mers’ to­tals from each leg will be added up to de­ter­mine the fi­nal rank­ings, where the top eight will earn prize mon­ey, with the win­ner tak­ing home $100,000 USD.

Swim­mers earned points based on both where they fin­ished and how many FI­NA points they scored in that swim. There’s no re­stric­tion on how many events an ath­lete can en­ter, but on­ly their top three per­for­mances from each meet will count to­ward the point to­tal. Click here for a full break­down of the scor­ing.

Re­flect­ing on his triple-gold per­for­mance Carter speak­ing to swim­swam.com said, “I wrote a goal down on my board in my room af­ter hav­ing a tough sum­mer.”

“I missed out on three ma­jor medals. I was fourth at long course worlds. I fin­ished fourth twice at the Com­mon­wealth, and I came out of that with a lot of fire. I wrote it down. I knew I want­ed to come and be re­al­ly, re­al­ly good here. I did what I want­ed to do.”

With re­gard to his re­newed fo­cus, Carter said, “I’m try­ing to trust my­self, and trust­ing one­self is what gets them through those anx­ious mo­ments.”

Le Clos was equal­ly pleased with his per­for­mance and looked ahead to the next two weeks of bat­tles with the red-hot Carter.

“I haven’t had that time in five or six years,” said le Clos, who dubbed him­self “Chad le Clos 2.0″ ear­li­er in the meet. “Dy­lan’s had a great meet so far. It’s go­ing to be fun for the next two weeks.”

The T&T swim­mer will look to con­tin­ue his gold medal ex­ploits when he com­petes in the sec­ond Leg in Toron­to, Cana­da from Fri­day un­til Sun­day in the 25 me­tres swim­ming event at the Toron­to Pan Am Sports Cen­tre. Then end­ing with the third and fi­nal Leg in In­di­anapo­lis, USA from No­vem­ber 3 to 5 at the IU Nata­to­ri­um.

Fol­low­ing the third and fi­nal leg of the World Cup in No­vem­ber, Carter is ex­pect­ed to com­pete in the Na­tion­al Short Course which will serve as his fi­nal prepa­ra­tions for the FI­NA World Short Course Cham­pi­onships in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia.