T&T's Ty­la Ho-A-Shu of North­gate Col­lege es­tab­lished a new na­tion­al Open Girls record in the 50 me­tres breast­stroke when she placed sec­ond in her heat and 24th over­all on the open­ing day of World Aquat­ics Ju­nior Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships in Ne­tanya, Is­rael, on Mon­day.

The six-day com­pe­ti­tion takes place in the Wingate In­sti­tut at Is­rael’s Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport.

The 17-year-old Ho-A-Shu, com­ing off of a sil­ver and bronze medal show­ing at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Swim­ming Con­fed­er­a­tion (CC­CAN) Cham­pi­onships in El Sal­vador last month, touched the wall in 33.11 sec­onds from lane five to trail host swim­mer Hadar Karp, who won the heat from lane three in 32.91 as both swim­mers missed out on a top 16 plac­ing to qual­i­fy to the semi­fi­nals.

The oth­er fin­ish­ers in the heat were In­dia’s Man­avi Var­ma (33.84), Paraguay’s Astrid Ca­ballero (33.98), Bo­livia’s Na­iara Ro­ca (34.55), Cos­ta Ri­ca’s Sthe­fany Vene­gas (34.86), Hon­duras’ Sairy Es­calante (35.03), and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic duo of Cami­la De La Rosa (35.61), and Maria Guz­man (35.80).

Speak­ing af­ter her swim, Ho-A-Shu who at­tained eight pass­es in her re­cent CSEC Ex­am­i­na­tions, in­clu­sive of six Grade Is and two Grade IIs from her eight sub­jects and plans to fur­ther her stud­ies at the Sixth Form Lev­el in Math­e­mat­ics, Physics, and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, said she was proud to achieve a new na­tion­al record.

She said, "My 50m breast­stroke race felt good, but it def­i­nite­ly opened up my eyes to a lot of work that I have to do to get in­to the fi­nals.

"Per­son­al­ly, I think I did a good job be­cause I came in with a time of 33.32, the old na­tion­al Long Course record, and I broke it with a time of 33.11."

Ho-A-Shu will re­turn to the pool on Wednes­day for the women’s 100m breast­stroke from 3.03 am (T&T time) in the sec­ond heat against Botswana’s Melo­di Sale­shan­do, Paraguay’s Cristhi­ane Anasco, An­go­la’s Fer­nan­des, Sri Lan­ka’s She­hani Ven­turi, Guatemala’s Nicole Mack, Hon­duran Es­calante, Kyr­gyzs­tan’s Ma­ri­na Krakhmal­e­va, St Lu­cia’s Fayth Jef­frey, and Fi­nar­i­tra Raza­ka­tiana of Mada­gas­car.

T&T’s main medal hope­ful in Is­rael, Nikoli Black­man, the triple gold medal win­ner at the re­cent Com­mon­wealth Youth Games (CYG) held in T&T last month, will be­gin his medal hunt in the men's 200m freestyle Tues­day from 4.12 am (TT time) with the top ten swim­mers ad­vanc­ing straight to the gold medal splash.

The 18-year-old Black­man, now a stu­dent-ath­lete at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee clocked a new per­son­al best time of one minute, 49.94 sec­onds in win­ning gold at the CYG and is hope­ful of im­prov­ing on that time.

Look­ing ahead to the start of his cam­paign, a re­laxed Black­man said, "Since win­ning triple gold at the CYG, I have been at uni­ver­si­ty for a week with my new team­mates train­ing and I have learned new stuff in terms of how to start off the blocks and al­so how to make my 50s more ef­fi­cient and now it's for me to put it in­to prac­tice."

In the 200m freestyle, Black­man will swim from lane two against Is­rael’s Daniel Ra­bi­novich, Brazil­ian Leonar­do Al­can­tara, Ital­ians Fil­ip­po Bertoni, and Alessan­dro Ra­gai­ni, USA’s Ja­son Zhao, Poland’s Adam Zdy­bel, Ko­rea’s Jun­woo Kim, Turkey’s Ah­met Bu­rak Isik, and Slo­va­kia’s Kris­t­ian Obert.

A for­mer St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege, and Fa­ti­ma Col­lege pupil, Black­man will be mak­ing his sec­ond and fi­nal ap­pear­ance at the World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onship af­ter mak­ing his de­but last year in Li­ma, Pe­ru, where he placed sev­enth in the men’s 50m freestyle fi­nal in 22.83 and 12th over­all in the 100m freestyle in 50.63.

On Wednes­day, Black­man re­turns to the pool for the 50m freestyle and will line up in heat eight of ten from lane four against Is­rael’s Nir Hay, South Africa’s Tay­lor Luck, Czech Re­pub­lic’s On­drej Slavik, USA’s Ethan Har­ring­ton, Brazil’s Pe­dro San­sone, Is­rael’s Mikhail Po­vali­aev, Cana­da’s Chris Weeks, Poland’s Ju­lian Swider­s­ki, and Colom­bian San­ti­a­go Artea­ga.

On Fri­day, Black­man in his fi­nal event, the men’s 100m freestyle, will race in heat ten of 11 from lane six against Aus­tria’s Lukas Edl, Croa­t­ian Vla­ho Ne­nadic, Ko­rea’s Minkyu Noh, Ital­ian Loren­zo Bal­lar­ti, USA’s Max­imus Williamson, Aus­tralian Ed­ward Som­merville, Chi­na’s Xizhe Wang, Czech Re­pub­lic’s Jakub Krischke and Poland’s Zdy­bel.

Last month at the CYG, Black­man won the 50m freestyle in 22.36, a new per­son­al record and the 100m freestyle ti­tle in 49.60 at the CYG, al­so a new per­son­al best, and first sub-50 sec­onds' swim.