T&T’s Dy­lan Carter swam the fi­nal leg as Lon­don Roar stormed to vic­to­ry in the men’s 4x100 me­tres freestyle on the open­ing day of semi­fi­nal Match Day Four Play­off when the In­ter­na­tion­al Swim­ming League con­tin­ued in Eind­hoven, Hol­land on Sat­ur­day.

Com­pet­ing at the Pieter Van Den Hoogen­band Sta­di­um, Lon­don Roar’s Aus­tralian Kyle Chalmers swam the lead-off leg in a scorch­ing 45.53 sec­onds and his team­mates Kat­su­mi Naka­mu­ra (46.63 sec­onds) and Zac In­cer­ti (46.49) made cer­tain of stay­ing ahead of the chas­ing pack with equal­ly im­pres­sive times over the sec­ond and third legs.

For the fi­nal leg, Carter en­joyed a nice cush­ion of a lead and be­hind his im­pres­sive split of 45.90 sec­onds, the Roar took the gold medal in three min­utes, 04.55 sec­onds, the fastest time of the sea­son, and 38 valu­able team points.

Carter’s for­mer team LA Cur­rent with Brett Pin­fold (47.09), Apos­to­los Chris­tou (45.98), Tom Shields (47.95), and Maxime Rooney (46.03) took sil­ver in 3:06.15 while Cali Con­dors com­pris­ing Kacper Ma­jchrzak (47.10), Jesse Puts (47.58), Justin Ress (46.25) and Amer­i­can ace Caeleb Dres­sel (47.26) got bronze in 3:08.19.

And in the 20th and fi­nal event of the day, Carter moved his team up from fourth to sec­ond on the an­chor–leg in 45.86 af­ter team­mates Guil­herme Gui­do (49.20), Sam Williamson (58.05), and Chalmers (50.03) for sil­ver in the men’s 4x100m med­ley re­lay in 3:23.23 min­utes and 14 points.

This time, Cali Con­dors moved up from sixth af­ter the first-leg to take gold in 3:22.44 be­hind Cole­man Stew­art (50.47), Nic Fink (56.58), Dres­sel (49.60), and Ress (45.79) while LA Cur­rent’s Ryan Mur­phy (48.73), Javier Aceve­do (58.45), Shields (48.83) and Pin­fold (46.32) took bronze in 3:23.33.

The Lon­don Roar ‘B’ quar­tet of Chris­t­ian Di­ener (49.65), Ross Mur­doch (57.51), Vi­ni Lan­za (50.17), and Naka­mu­ra (47.24) end­ed fourth in 3:24.57 to add ten valu­able points to their team’s tal­ly.

In the men’s 50m freestyle fi­nal, Carter had to set­tle for joint fifth spot with Team Iron’s Thom de Boer in 21.09 sec­onds, on­ly ahead of Cali Con­dors’ Jesse Puts (21.26), and LA Cur­rent’s Maxime Rooney (21.52).

Carter and Lon­don Roar still had rea­sons to cel­e­brate in the event as his team­mate, Aus­tralia Kyle Chalmers won gold in 20.97, his third win in the event this sea­son to beat LA Cur­rent’s Kris­t­ian Gkolomeev (21.00) and Cali Con­dors’ Olympic cham­pi­on Caeleb Dres­sel (21.04) to sec­ond and third re­spec­tive­ly, while Iron’s Max­im Lobanovszk­ij was fourth in 21.08.

Dres­sel had won the event twice ear­ly in the reg­u­lar sea­son, clock­ing 20.86 in Match 2 and 20.67 in Match 4.

Go­ing in­to Sun­day’s sec­ond and fi­nal day of Match Day Four, Lon­don Roar leads af­ter 20 events with 287.5 points, 47.5 ahead of Cali Con­dors (238) while LA Cur­rent is third with 228, and Iron, fourth with 156 with 19 events to come on Sun­day.

Fol­low­ing this week­end event, Carter and Lon­don Roar will com­plete their sched­ule on Match Day Five card­ed for No­vem­ber, 25 and 26.

They will face En­er­gy Stan­dard, LA Cur­rent, and DC Tri­dent, while Match Day Six will fea­ture Cali Con­dors, Ti­tans, Aqua Cen­tu­ri­ons, and Iron on No­vem­ber 27 and 28.

At the end of the semi­fi­nals, the top four teams will ad­vance to the fi­nals in Eind­hoven, the same site as the up­com­ing ISL play­offs.

Last week­end, Carter made a tri­umphant re­turn to the com­pe­ti­tion pick­ing up a gold and two sil­ver medals in his team’s first play­off splash,

On Sun­day, Carter got sil­ver in the men’s 50 me­tres but­ter­fly in 22.52 sec­onds for a joint sec­ond spot with Aqua Cen­tu­ri­on’s Mat­teo Ri­v­ol­ta as both swim­mers fin­ished just 0.01 be­hind LA Cur­rent’s Tom Shield.

How­ev­er, in the men’s 50m but­ter­fly skins, the 25-year-old Carter bowed out at the semi­fi­nal stage af­ter a fourth-placed in 23.49 sec­onds, with Chalmers just ahead in third in 23.35 while Cen­tu­ri­ons’ Ri­v­ol­ta (23.24) and LA Cur­rent’s Shields (23.31) ad­vanced to the fi­nal, where Ri­v­ol­ta won in 23.39 to Shields’ 23.84.

In the open­ing round of the but­ter­fly skins, Carter had the fastest time of 22.25 with Shields (22.46), Ri­v­ol­ta (22.47), and Chalmers (22.62) the oth­er qual­i­fiers to the semi­fi­nals.

A day ear­li­er, Carter picked up where he left off in the pre­lim­i­nary round as he won a gold and sil­ver medal for Lon­don Roar to up his sea­son tal­ly to 11 medals.

In the men’s 50 me­tres freestyle fi­nal Chalmers took the crown with a 21.10 sec­onds clock­ing, with Carter and Toron­to Ti­tan’s Loren­zo Zazzeri joint sec­ond in 21.11.

In the 4x100 freestyle re­lay, Chalmers, Naka­mu­ra, In­cer­ti and Carter won in 3:05.43 min­utes.

LA fin­ished sec­ond in 3:08.03 min­utes, while Toron­to and Aqua tied for third in 2:08.97.

A for­mer mem­ber of the LA Cur­rent for the first two edi­tions of the ISL, Carter won nine medals from four Match Days of the ten-Match Days pre­lim­i­nary round which end­ed last month in Naples, Italy.

T&T's first-ever Com­mon­wealth Games swim­ming medal win­ner, Carter's medal tal­ly in­clud­ed four gold, three sil­ver, and two bronze which helped his team to 13 points from a max­i­mum of 16 and third spot on the ten-club stand­ings to be among the au­to­mat­ic semi­fi­nal qual­i­fiers.

Cur­rent ISL semi­fi­nal play­off stand­ings:

Po­si­tion*Team*Match­es Con­test­ed*Match Points*Team Points

1. En­er­gy Stan­dard*2*1,105*7

2. Toron­to Ti­tans*2*805.5*5

3. Cali Con­dors*1*534.5*4

4. LA Cur­rent*1*506*4

5. Lon­don Roar*1*494.5*3

6. DC Tri­dent*2*742.5*3

7. Aqua Cen­tu­ri­ons*2*747*3

8. Team Iron*1*340*1

Um­com­ing fix­tures

Match 5: No­vem­ber 25-26: #1 En­er­gy Stan­dard, #3 Lon­don Roar, #5 LA Cur­rent, #7 DC Tri­dent

Match 6: No­vem­ber 27-28: #2 Cali Con­dors, #4 Toron­to Ti­tans, #6 Aqua Cen­tu­ri­ons, #8 Iron

Fi­nals: De­cem­ber 3-4