SVG swimming continues CARIFTA medal run
St Vincent and the Grenadines’ CARIFTA record holding swimmer Shné Joachim continued her amazing streak of medal winning performances at the CARIFTA Swimming Championships held in the Bahamas April 15th to 18th, 2017. This year’s performance was truly outstanding given that Shné fractured her wrist five weeks earlier and had the cast removed only the day before the CARIFTA Championships started. This severely limited her training and preparation. Shné has now won medals at the CARIFTA level for five consecutive years and in over three different age groups.
Swimmers: Nikolas Sylvester, Aaron Defreitas, Bryson George, Alex Joachim and Mya Defreitas also represented SVG. All athletes improved on some of their previous performances. Aaron, Mya and Alex currently in the first year of their respective age groups competed against older and stronger athletes. We anticipate that they will be fighting for medals next year as they progress toward the top of their age groups.
Shné won a bronze medal in the 50 meter Breaststroke event in a time of 34.4 seconds. She also placed 5th in the 100 meter Breaststroke in a time of 1 minutes, 19.93 seconds. Both times were slower than her personal best times this year but given her injury this was to be expected.
National team coach Kyle Dougan commented that “the performance of Shné was very courageous and unexpected. To swim that well given her injury was outstanding. Winning medals for five consecutive years at the CARIFTA level is a historical accomplishment for SVG swimming and likely among the best athletic achievements in SVG sports.”
CARIFTA 2018 will be hosted in Jamaica and the 2019 Championships will be held in Trinidad. The 2018 event will be the last year of competitive eligibility at CARIFTA for Shné and Nikolas Sylvester.
Please contact us at svgasa@gmail.com with any queries, comments or suggestions you may have in regard to swimming.