Niall Roberts fails to medal at XXIV Carifta Swimming C/ships

Apr 21, 2009 Sports

Bettered entry times in 4 of 5 events

Niall Roberts, Guyana’s lone swimmer at the XXIV Carifta Swimming Championships which took place at the Piscina Olimpico “Roly Bisslik”, Savaneta in Aruba failed to medal in any of the five events he participated in, but bettered his entry time in four.

It was always going to be a tough proposition for the athlete who competed in the 15-17 age group.
On the final day, Roberts entered the 50m Freestyle with the 4th place seed time of 24.90sec and based on his entry times, this seemed to be the event in which he had the greatest chance of bringing home a medal.
However, this is always the most keenly contested event in every meet.
He placed 5th in the preliminary heat with a time of 24.91, but dropped to 8th place in the final with a time of 25.33.

Roberts was coached by Trinidad and Tobago Coach Franz Huggins and this was due to the close relationship Guyana enjoys with their sister T&T Federation.
An official of the local Association disclosed that based on Roberts’ performances, there seems to have been a pattern of better times in the morning preliminaries than in the evening finals.
“I cannot help but surmise that the “internal clocks” of our swimmers are geared only to morning swims as this is the only time that they are granted for pool time at the Castellani Pool.”

On the whole it was noted that Roberts performed quite well; bettering his entry times in four of his five events, despite having perhaps one third of the pool time of the other swimmers at the Carifta Championships he was still able to make it into the finals in three of his five events.
Roberts is expected back home today and attention will now switch to the Inter Guiana Games slated for April 24-27 in Guyana.
Teams from French Guiana and Suriname will take on the local under-19 athletes at swimming, athletics and football, both male and female.

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