T&T’s Dy­lan Carter will skip the high­ly rat­ed FI­NA Swim­ming World Cup Se­ries slat­ed for next month in Eu­rope ahead of his par­tic­i­pa­tion with the Lon­don Roar in the 2021 In­ter­na­tion­al Swim­ming League (ISL) play­offs in Eind­hoven, Hol­land in No­vem­ber.

The four-stage World Cup comes off on Oc­to­ber 1-3 (Stage 1) – Berlin, Ger­many; Oc­to­ber 7-9 (Stage 1) – Bu­dapest, Hun­gary; Oc­to­ber 21-23 (Stage 2) – Do­ha, Qatar, and Oc­to­ber 28-30 (Stage 2) – Kazan, Rus­sia.

How­ev­er, the T&T swim­mer on­ly com­plet­ed the pre­lim­i­nary round of the third edi­tion of the ISL on Fri­day last with new club Lon­don Roar and hav­ing se­cur­ing nine medals, in­clu­sive of four gold, three sil­ver and two bronze is now set for a well-de­served rest be­fore re­turn­ing to com­pe­ti­tion in No­vem­ber.

On Fri­day last, com­pet­ing in Match Day Nine at 25 me­tres Fe­lice Scan­done Swim­ming Pool, in Naples, Italy, Carter won bronze in the men’s 50me­tres but­ter­fly in a new na­tion­al record time of 22.36 sec­onds, be­hind win­ner Ben Proud of En­er­gy Stan­dard (22.26) and Toron­to Ti­tans’ Mar­ius Kusch (22.32).

A two-time Olympian and T&T’s first-ever Com­mon­wealth Games swim­ming medal win­ner, Carter’s time bet­tered his pre­vi­ous na­tion­al best of 22.38 es­tab­lished when he won bronze at the 2018 FI­NA World Short Course Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship in Hangzhou, Chi­na be­hind Brazil­ians Nicholas San­tos (21.81) and South Africa Chad Le Clos (21.97).

A stand­out at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia the 25-year-old Carter al­so swam the fastest leg of all swim­mers in help­ing Lon­don Roar to a third straight gold medal and his fourth over­all in the men’s 4x100 me­tres freestyle re­lay.

Speak­ing on Sat­ur­day af­ter his team had ce­ment­ed its play­off spot Carter re­flect­ing on his na­tion­al record swim in the but­ter­fly said, “Ob­vi­ous­ly I’m very hap­py with the per­son­al best even though it's on­ly by .02 hun­dredths, it’s a na­tion­al record as well so I’m hap­py with it.

“I was hop­ing to win one last event, but the race was very fast tonight (Fri­day) and I had to set­tle for third.

“But it was a fast time in a fast field and I had a lot of fun over the four weeks of rac­ing and I’m now look­ing for­ward to a cou­ple of weeks of rest now and then we get back go­ing in No­vem­ber.

“The FI­NA World Cup is next month but for me, from now un­til the play­offs in No­vem­ber I will not be do­ing any meets, stat­ed Carter.

He added, "Right now I have just land­ed back in Mi­a­mi from Italy and I will be head­ing down to Trinidad in the next cou­ple of days. And while at home I will just be do­ing a bit of train­ing and stay­ing sharp and work­ing on a cou­ple of things be­tween now and Eind­hoven and hope­ful­ly I will be quick­er when I get to the Nether­lands"

The Roar quar­tet of Aus­tralian Olympian Kyle Chalmers (46.18 sec­onds), Carter (46.02), Japan’s Kat­su­mi Naka­mu­ra (46.69) and Eng­land’s Ed­ward Mil­dred (47.60) won in three min­utes, 06.50 with Toron­to Ti­tan sec­ond in 3:08.0, and En­er­gy Stan­dard third in 3:08.21.

Carter (46.05) al­so com­bined Brazil­ian Guil­herme Gui­do (49.44), Ross Mur­doch (57.63) and Chalmers (49.81) to take sil­ver in the 4x100m med­ley re­lay in 3:22.93, to trail En­er­gy Stan­dard who won in 3:22.38, while DC Tri­dent took bronze in 3:23.39.

Pri­or to his team’s fi­nal match, Carter swam to his first in­di­vid­ual gold medal of the ISL when he won the men’s 50m but­ter­fly in 22.40 sec­onds on Match Day Eight while he won gold in the 4x100m freestyle re­lay in 3:05.84.

On Match Day Six, Carter got sil­ver in the men’s 50m but­ter­fly in 22.42, to trail Aqua Cen­tu­ri­ons’ Sze­baszt­ian Sz­abo who won gold in 22.18 while Tokyo Frog Kings’ Takeshi Kawamo­to and Lon­don Roar’s Vi­ni Lan­za tied for bronze in 22.68.

And he cap­tured gold with the men’s 4x100m freestyle re­lay quar­tet in 3:05.05 min­utes.

When the Lon­don Roar splashed off their ISL cam­paign in Match Day Three dur­ing the first week of Sep­tem­ber Carter won a sil­ver and bronze medal.

He got bronze in the 50m but­ter­fly in 22.62 and then had the joint-fastest leg of 46.37 in pick­ing up sil­ver as part of the 4x100m freestyle re­lay quar­tet who clocked 3:07.62.

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of Match Day Nine, En­er­gy Stan­dard moved to the top of the ten-team ta­ble with a max­i­mum of 16 points from their al­lot­ted four Match Days as the lone un­de­feat­ed team, one point ahead of de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Cali Con­dors while Carter and the Lon­don Roar fin­ished with 13, one ahead of Toron­to Ti­tans (12) with LA Cur­rent, Carter’s for­mer club fifth with 11 points from their al­lot­ted four meets and cer­tain to be in Eind­hoven for the six weeks of the eight-team main draw play­offs swims.

How­ev­er, host club Aqua Cen­tu­ri­ons of Italy with six points, Team Iron (five), DC Tri­dent (five), Tokyo Frog Kings (four) and New York Break­ers, with three points, were locked in a bat­tle to avoid be­ing the bot­tom four fin­ish­ers at the end of Match Day Ten who will con­test the four-team play-in to the top eight play­offs.

The first play­off in­volv­ing the sev­enth to tenth-placed teams will take place from Sep­tem­ber 29-30 in Naples from which the top two fin­ish­ers will join the six top-ranked teams for six Match Days af­ter which the top four will con­test the semi­fi­nals at the Pieter Van Den Hoogen­band Sta­di­um, in Hol­land from No­vem­ber 11-18 and 25-28.

The fi­nals of the third edi­tion are card­ed for Feb­ru­ary 7-9, 2022 at a venue yet to be de­ter­mined.