Medals for St Lucia at CARIFTA

At a press conference here the day before St Lucia departed for the 40th edition of the CARIFTA Games in Jamaica, Past President of the St Lucia Athletics Association, Wayne Burton predicted the team would come away with at least four medals.

While Burton didn’t say what colour the medals would be (gold, silver or bronze), he was dead on with the medal count. St Lucia’s track and field team did come away with four medals-two silver and two bronze.

Denzil St Marthe captured the silver medal in Under-17 Boys Javelin with a throw of 58.91 metres (m).  Adrian Williams (St Kitts Nevis) won the event with a distance of 60.15 m. The other silver came courtesy of pole-vaulter Shem Edward, who won his third medal during three consecutive appearances at CARIFTA.  It could easily have been gold instead of silver, after he cleared 4.40 m along with Jamaica’s Xavier Boland. However, Boland was awarded the gold medal with fewer misses at that height.

Jeanelle Scheper competed in the Under-20 Girls high jump, came through with a bronze medal clearing a height of 1.70 m. Petergaye Reid (Jamaica) won the event going over the bar at 1.78 m. Second place went to Thea Lafond from Dominica
(1.75 m).

The other silver medal went to Marbeq Edgar in the Under-17 boys 1500 metres. He covered the distance in 4:09.90. Nicholas Landeau (Trinidad & Tobago) won the event with a time of 4:04.84.

As expected the powerful Jamaicans finished on top in the medal standings with 33 gold, 21 silver and 12 bronze medals. Barbados was second accumulating nine gold, eight silver and 10 bronze medals, followed by third place Bahamas with nine gold, 11 silver and 11 bronze.

While the gold medal eluded track and field athletes, that was not the case at the LIME CARIFTA Swimming Championships in Barbados. Siona Huxley set a new first for St Lucia when she established a new CARIFTA record in the girl’s 15-17 age group 50M Backstroke with a time of 30.49 seconds. The silver went to Kimberlee John Williams of Trinidad (30.73) and bronze to Kendese Nangle of Jamaica (31.07)

Huxley made two other finals to place fifth in the 100M Back (1:08.85) out of 19 swimmers and fifth in the 50M Fly (30.86) out of 10 swimmers.

St Lucia’s other swimmers all performed well at the Championships with Runako Daniel setting a two St Lucia National Records in the 100M Fly and 100M Free with times of 1:01.13 and 54.26 respectively. Daniel made the finals of the 100M free where he placed seventh.  He also placed ninth in the 50M Fly (27.28) a personal best and 12th in the 50M Back (30.02).

Jordan Augier secured a spot in the finals in the boys 50M Back and placed sixth, with a new St Lucia Age group record of 29.51 seconds. He was 12th in 100M Back (1:05.33) and 18th in 50M Fly (28.11). Three of his times were personal bests.

Jon L Innocent Dolor finished 13th in the 200M breast with a time of 2:53.55 and set two personal bests in the 50M Breast (33.85) and 50M Free (26.58).

Jason Beaubrun placed 15th in the 100M Fly (1:08.04) and the 50M Fly (31.18) and 17th in 100M Free (1:02.01). All three times personal best.

Jyasi Daniel did four personal best in the 50M Fly (33.87), 50M Back (38.28), 50M Breast (41.1) and 100M Free (1:09.77).

Thalia Bergasse swam a personal best in the 100M Back (1:17.03) to place 10th and 13th in the 50M Back (35.33)

Laura Bruce swam two personal bests in the 50m Back (36.97) and the 100m Free (1:09.20).