A moth­er’s love can nev­er be bro­ken. That is a love that knows no sac­ri­fice is too large and no sup­port too small.

Tra­cy Mon­trichard-Carter’s fam­i­ly-first ap­proach, to­geth­er with her hus­band Ever­ald, has been es­sen­tial in pro­pelling their son and T&T’s cur­rent elite-lev­el swim­mer Dy­lan Carter to great heights and suc­cess in the pool.

Mon­trichard-Carter is wear­ing two hats at the Paris Olympics 2024 in France, one as man­ag­er of the swim­ming team and the oth­er as a moth­er.

On Tues­day, her son pre­pares to par­tic­i­pate in the first of two events at his third Olympic Games, the 100-me­tre freestyle at 5.36 am (T&T time) in heat sev­en, from lane three af­ter yes­ter­day wit­ness­ing 17-year-old Zuri Fer­gu­son fin­ish­ing third in heat two of the women’s 100m back­stroke.

Man­ag­er Mon­trichard-Carter told Guardian Me­dia Sports, “We are so very proud of her per­for­mance. She has been very fo­cused and dis­ci­plined in all her train­ing and prepa­ra­tion; she was not like any star-struck lit­tle girl. She walked proud­ly and pre­sent­ed her­self well.

“As for Dy­lan, we have done all that was pos­si­ble giv­en the cir­cum­stances. Turkey was an ex­cel­lent fa­cil­i­ty, which I would rec­om­mend to any­one and the re­al­ly small camp here (in France) was a tight and small group, which made Dy­lan re­al­ly hap­py. Dex­ter is do­ing a great job and now we have George (Bovell III) on deck as well, which is a plus to our team.”

For­mer Olympic bronze medal win­ner and five-time Olympian George Bovell III joined Carter’s coach­ing staff fol­low­ing a two-week train­ing camp at the Glo­ria Sports Are­na in An­talya, Turkey, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of coach Dex­ter Browne, just be­fore the start of the Games.

Mon­trichard-Carter said, “We have been in talks since Christ­mas with George, but he has a busy sched­ule as he is train­ing to be a Shaman (they act as me­di­a­tors in their cul­ture in Pe­ru), so he has a lot on his plate.

“But he has al­ways been a huge men­tor to Dy­lan; in fact, his moth­er told me that Dy­lan is like a lit­tle broth­er to him,” not­ed Mon­trichard-Carter. 

As a par­ent, the stead­fast but lov­ing mom, told Guardian Me­dia: “I think that Dy­lan has grown so much since Tokyo. He is a lot calmer and a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ath­lete; af­ter all, it is not his first rodeo. I have wit­nessed how ded­i­cat­ed he is to his train­ing and craft.

“With the Olympics, it is so close be­tween all of the swim­mers that it could be like a throw of the dice; every­body is fast, and with one to eight, there is un­der a hun­dredth of a sec­ond be­tween them. If luck goes our way, we can get some re­sults.”

In terms of pres­sure as a par­ent and man­ag­er, she open­ly re­vealed, “For me, I have been work­ing on my­self to be calmer. We have to be calm for those around us, so it is ba­by steps, one step at a time, one event at a time.”

Carter will race against Jorge Iga of Mex­i­co, Cana­di­an Yuri Kisil, Sean Niewold of the Nether­lands, Rafael Fente-Damers of the host coun­try, Tomer Frankel of Is­rael, New Zealand’s Cameron Gray and Ser­gio de Celis Mon­tal­ban of Spain.

Carter will have his dad Ever­ald, his sis­ter Mi­la, aunt Leslie, and cousins Lau­ren, Te­di, and Luke with flags in his cor­ner at the com­pe­ti­tion venue.

As to her words to the pub­lic of T&T, Mon­trichard-Carter said, “We ap­pre­ci­ate all the sup­port and love; it is so up­lift­ing and thank you. Let’s keep sup­port­ing Team TTO. I can tell you I have been with these ath­letes here and they work their tail off; they bleed red, white, and black so let us con­tin­ue to ap­pre­ci­ate them; so keep the sup­port com­ing.”

Ear­li­er Mon­day, 17-year-old Fer­gu­son clocked one minute and 02.75 sec­onds to place 27th over­all and did not progress but the T&T swim team man­ag­er was proud of her ef­fort.

“I told her be­fore, all I want you to do is light up the blocks, and she did it (the blocks you are swim­ming from light up when you fin­ish first, sec­ond, or third),” said Mon­trichard-Carter. 

Zuri, who still has one more year at At­tle­boro High School— where she holds the school record in every in­di­vid­ual event and has won three straight Di­vi­sion I ti­tles in the 100 back­stroke — will swim at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da start­ing in 2025.

Com­pet­ing at the Olympics has been on Fer­gu­son’s radar since she was in mid­dle school, but she wasn’t ex­pect­ing to get there un­til the 2028 Games. Look­ing ahead to the fu­ture, she not­ed, “Zuri is in a good place; she will soon be at­tend­ing a top-tier uni­ver­si­ty, and she has the su­perb sup­port of her par­ents and coach, who I got to meet re­cent­ly, and I know how im­por­tant that is.”