T&T swim­mer Dy­lan Carter end­ed his cam­paign in the In­ter­na­tion­al Swim­ming League (ISL) with a fourth-placed fin­ish in the men’s 100 me­tres back­stroke for LA Cur­rent at the Duna Are­na, Hun­gary on Sun­day.

Com­pet­ing in a top-qual­i­ty field from lane sev­en, Carter was third at the half-way stage in 23.76 sec­onds be­hind team-mate Ryan Mur­phy (23.61) and Lon­don Roar’s Guil­herme Gui­do (23.67) while En­er­gy Stan­dard’s Kli­ment Kolesnikov (23.98) and Cal­i­for­nia Con­dors’ Cole­man Stew­art (24.00) were fourth and fifth, re­spec­tive­ly.

How­ev­er, over the sec­ond half of the event, 24-year-old Carter fad­ed by one po­si­tion with a split of 26.15 for a 49.91 clock­ing and fourth spot.

The time by Carter marked the first time a T&T na­tion­al had gone un­der the 50 sec­onds bar­ri­er and bet­ter­ing his 50.11 he sat in Match Ten two weeks ago at the same venue.

Tak­ing top spot with a siz­zling sec­ond-half split of 24.84 was Kolesnikov who won in 48.82 while Mur­phy took sil­ver in 49.29 and Stew­art, bronze in 49.62.

Kolesnikov’s swim was the sec­ond-fastest swim in his­to­ry be­hind the World Rrecord he set on Sat­ur­day (48.58), on the lead-off leg of En­er­gy Stan­dard’s 400m med­ley re­lay. The oth­er fin­ish­ers in the event were Stan­dard’s Matt Gre­vers in 49.97, Gui­do (49.99), Lon­don’s Chris­t­ian Di­ener (50.23) and Con­dors’ Ra­doslaw Kawec­ki in 50.30.

Re­flect­ing on the six weeks of com­pe­ti­tion in the ISL said some­thing he learnt was just the im­por­tance of be­ing able to ride the ups and downs through­out the com­pe­ti­tion.

“It sounds short but it's re­al­ly a long sea­son with lots of swims along the way so be­ing able to take the good swims and car­ry over the mo­men­tum from it and let the bad swims kind of just fall away," said Carter, who was al­so full of praise for his team’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Lenny Krayzel­burg say­ing its an ho­n­our to swim for his team.

“He (Lenny) is an icon in the sport and he is al­so a Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Tro­jan alum­ni like my­self, so it’s an in­cred­i­ble ho­n­our for me to swim for his team and I know that every time I go out there to rep­re­sent LA Cur­rent, I can try and make him and my team-mates proud.”

On Sat­ur­day, Carter, a Com­mon­wealth Games medal­ist was part of the LA Cur­rent team to grab bronze in the 4x100m freestyle re­lay.

The quar­tet of Maxime Rooney (46.55), Kris­t­ian Gkolomeev (45/87), Carter (46.78) and Tom Shields (46.00) com­bined for three min­utes, 05.20 sec­onds.

Dres­sel didn’t break an­oth­er World record lead­ing off the 400m freestyle re­lay but he did break his own Amer­i­can record in a 45.18, putting the Con­dors in a mas­sive lead ahead of Stan­dard’s Evge­ny Rylov (46.09).

How­ev­er, Kolesnikov, Le Clos, and Man­au­dou reeled in the team from Cal­i­for­nia to fin­ish in 3:02.78, scor­ing 18 points. En­er­gy al­so placed 5th to take an­oth­er 8 points and a to­tal of 26.

LA Cur­rent brought in 18 points thanks to their third and sixth-place fin­ish­es.

Al­so on Sat­ur­day, the Cal­i­for­nia-based Carter end­ed in the fifth spot in the star-stud­ded men’s 50m freestyle in 21.21 sec­onds.

The race was all Con­dor’s Caeleb Dres­sel, who af­ter pro­duc­ing a World Record in the 100m but­ter­fly ear­li­er in 47.78, blast­ed a 20.16 in the 50 freestyle, low­er­ing this record for the sec­ond time in his ca­reer and best­ing for­mer World Record hold­er Flo­rent Man­au­dou once again.

Stan­dard’s Man­au­dou, for his part, post­ed a 20.60 for sec­ond while LA’s Gkolomeev was third in 20.75, low­er­ing his Greek Record once again fol­lowed by Justin Ress on Con­dors in 20.95.

And in his oth­er swim on Sat­ur­day, Carter was rel­a­tive­ly dis­ap­point­ing in this 50m back­stroke af­ter his strong show­ing in the back­stroke skins in ISL match No 10 af­ter he placed sev­enth in 23.95.

His club-mate Mur­phy took top spot, win­ning in a new Amer­i­can record time of 22.54 while his trash-talk­ing ri­val Cole­man Stew­art nabbed sec­ond spot for Cali in 22.76 fol­lowed by Rylov and Gui­do who shared the third spot with sim­i­lar times of 23.02.

In terms of cash re­ward, Carter earned US$800 on each on in­di­vid­ual per­for­mances and re­lays, and US$1,000 via Team Bonus­es for a to­tal of US$2,600.

Over­all, Carter and his LA Cur­rent team-mates fin­ished in a fa­mil­iar fourth spot, the same as last year with 298 points.

Led by cap­tain Dres­sel, who won match MVP ho­n­ours with 96 points, the Con­dors won the ISL Grand Fi­nal with 561.5 points, top­ping 2019 cham­pi­on En­er­gy Stan­dard (464.5) by 97 while Lon­don Roar was third with 391. Dres­sel al­so fin­ished as the Sea­son MVP with 463.5 points.

Last sea­son, Cali placed third in the fi­nal be­hind En­er­gy Stan­dard and the Lon­don Roar.

The Con­dors are al­so the first club in league his­to­ry to fin­ish a sea­son un­de­feat­ed. They topped En­er­gy Stan­dard in their on­ly oth­er head-to-head show­down back in Match 1, while last sea­son’s cham­pi­ons fell to the Lon­don Roar at the 2019 Eu­ro­pean Der­by.

Re­flect­ing on his sea­son, Carter, a Pan Amer­i­can Games medal win­ner said he thought he had a good sea­son, a bet­ter one as com­pared to last year.

“I think it was just dif­fer­ent in that when you rep­re­sent a small coun­try like T&T like swim­ming at the Worlds, as com­pared to when you go to the ISL and rep­re­sent a team.

“There are a lot more con­se­quences as you don’t want to let down your team-mates and I think the pres­sure got to me last year, where­as this year I used it more as fu­el, than let­ting it sort of throw me off," said Carter.