Carter, Lyons miss out on semis qualifications

T&T swim­mers, Dy­lan Carter and Cadell Lyons both failed to qual­i­fy for the semi­fi­nals of their re­spec­tive men's 50m freestyle and 100m but­ter­fly events when at the 18th FI­NA World Cham­pi­onship which con­tin­ued at the Nam­bu In­ter­na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre, in Gwangju, South Ko­rea on Fri­day.

The 23-year-old Carter who qual­i­fied for the 100m freestyle at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on Tues­day night, had a dis­ap­point­ing end to the cham­pi­onship with a 41st place fin­ish in the men's 50m freestyle.

This af­ter Carter, a stand­out swim­mer for the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia from which he re­cent­ly grad­u­at­ed, and the win­ner of this coun­try’s first-ever swim medal for T&T at the Com­mon­wealth Games in Aus­tralia, last year, touched the wall in 22.65 sec­onds from lane-one for the sixth spot in the heat which com­prised ten swim­mers.

Fin­ish­ing ahead of the T&T swim­mer who had ear­li­er in the meet qual­i­fied for all three semi­fi­nals of the his oth­er events were Is­rael's Me­iron Cheruti (22.06), Chi­nese Taipei's Chung-Feng Wu (22.21), Bel­gium's Pieter Tim­mers (22.32), and the pair of Hong Kong's Ian Yen­tou Ho and New Zealand's Michael Pick­ett who both clocked 22.59.

The quar­tet of Kaza­khstan's Alexan­dr Varakin (22.72), Ser­bian An­drej Bar­na (22.77), Nor­we­gian Niksa Sto­jkovs­ki (22.79) and In­dia’s Vird­haw­al Khade (22.95) were the oth­er fin­ish­ers in the heat.

On Tues­day, Carter, swim­ming from lane eight in the first of two 100m freestyle semi­fi­nals touched the wall in 48.52 sec­onds for sev­enth in the heat, which was just ahead of the Olympic stan­dard qual­i­fi­ca­tion mark of 45.87 and 12th over­all.

Over­all, Carter’s time placed him 12th from the two semi­fi­nals and his Olympic Games ap­pear­ance next year will be the sec­ond straight af­ter the for­mer Fa­ti­ma Col­lege stu­dent com­pet­ed in the men’s 100m freestyle at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games in 2016.

He al­so placed 16th in the 100m back­stroke (54.08) and 13th in the 50m but­ter­fly (23.37) in his oth­er swims.

Com­pet­ing in heat four of nine, Cadell Lyons won in 54.79 sec­onds for 46th spot over­all, ahead of Syr­i­an Ay­man Kelzi (55.15), Iran's Alireza Yavari (55.63), Ja­maican Keanan Dols (55.66), Geor­gia's Teimu­raz Kobakhidze (56.03), Cos­ta Ri­can Bryan Al­varez (56.04), St Lu­cian Jay­han Od­lum-Smith (56.31), Cu­ra­cao's Seg­gio Bernar­di­na (56.54), Qatari Ya­cob Al-Hhu­laifi (56.62) and Guatemalan, Fer­an­n­do Ponce (58.26).

On Fri­day night, T&T’s lone women com­peti­tor in Ko­rea, Cherelle Thomp­son was ex­pect­ed to lines up in the 50m freestyle, heat sev­en of 11 with Lushav­el Stick­land of Samoa, Kenyan Emi­ly Muteti, Cay­man Is­lands’ Lau­ren Hew, Cu­ra­cao’s Chade Ner­si­cio, Mad­dy Moore of Bermu­da, Mariel Men­cia of Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Kei On Lei, Botswana’s Nao­mi Ru­ele and Na­talya Kri­tin­i­na of Uzbek­istan.

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