Lit­tle Kyle Leera was the star on Sat­ur­day when the Na­tion­al Open Short Course Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships con­tin­ued at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va.

Leera, a dou­ble-gold win­ner at the Good­will Swim Meet at the same venue ear­li­er in Au­gust, claimed three gold medals at Sat­ur­day's third day of the event, com­ing in the boys' 10 and un­der 50-me­tre breast­stroke, the 100m freestyle and the 100m but­ter­fly.

He dom­i­nat­ed the ti­tles won on the day, while Chris­t­ian Awah and Tay­lor Marchan were al­so in win­ner's row by each win­ning two ti­tles. Nikoli Black­man, the ju­nior swim­ming ace was al­so among the medals, as well as Amelia Ra­jack and Tyler Ho-A-Shu.

Af­ter qual­i­fy­ing from the 50m breast­stroke fi­nal ear­li­er, Leera's ooz­ing con­fi­dence showed from start to fin­ish, as he touched the wall at the fin­ish well ahead of his clos­est ri­val in a time of 39.23 sec­onds. Je­re­mi­ah Ma­habir lat­er stormed home for the sil­ver medal in 45.18, with Aidan May­ers tak­ing the bronze (45.71).

It was much of the same in the 100m freestyle for Leera's sec­ond fi­nal of the day, where he cruised to the fin­ish ahead of the same two swim­mers, Ma­habir and May­ers in that or­der, in 1:11.39, fol­low­ing splits at 15.71 and 34.06.

Ma­habir, fol­lowed Leera from the start with splits at 17.07, 35.78 and 54.93, be­fore touch­ing the wall at 1:13.33 for his fin­ish, while May­ers took the bronze in 1:13.69.  

In the 100m but­ter­fly, Leera se­cured the win in 1:20.45 with the oth­er two places be­ing gob­bled up by the pair of May­ers and Mic­ah Alexan­der in times of 1:25.81 and 1:30.74, re­spec­tive­ly.

Leera's wins in­creased his gold medal tal­ly to six af­ter claim­ing three gold on Fri­day night, in the boys' 10 and un­der 100m breast­stroke, the 50m back­stroke and the 200m freestyle in re­spec­tive times of 1:25.51, 36.01 and 2:36.56.

Marchan on the oth­er hand, dashed to the fin­ish in the girls' 100m but­ter­fly in 1:19.42, with sec­ond Mare­na Mar­tinez (1:21.21) and third Za­lay­har Lewis (1:23.07) in close pur­suit.

She was back at it lat­er on in the day, this time seal­ing the win in the 100m freestyle by post­ing a time of 1:08.42. The duo of Zara Per­si­co (1:09.42) and Mar­tinez (1:11.02) took sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly.

Mean­while, Awah took the gold medals in the 50m but­ter­fly and 50m breast­stroke af­ter splash­ing to times of 23.98 and 29.63, re­spec­tive­ly.

Black­man's win­ning per­for­mance came in the boys' 11 and over 200m freestyle event where he rushed to the wall first, ahead of the pair of Zachary An­tho­ny (1:59.25) and Liam Car­ring­ton (2:00.99) in a time of 1:53.32).