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Thursday, April 3, 2025

Carter: Three close podium misses ignited my fire

by

Nigel Simon
890 days ago
20221026
T&T’s ace international swimmer Dylan Carter made it three gold medals in a three days when he mounted the top of the podium for the third time in the first leg of the FINA Short Course Swimming World Cup in Berlin, Germany on Sunday.

T&T’s ace international swimmer Dylan Carter made it three gold medals in a three days when he mounted the top of the podium for the third time in the first leg of the FINA Short Course Swimming World Cup in Berlin, Germany on Sunday.

Photo courtesy SporTT

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.


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