Top T&T swimmer Carter bags gold, silver at ISL.
TEAM TTO standout swimmer Dylan Carter blasted his way to one gold and one silver on the opening day of the semi-final match 2 of the International Swimming League (ISL) yesterday, in Eindhoven, Holland.
At the Pieter van den Hoogenband Zwemstadion, the 25-year-old Carter posted a personal best 21.11 seconds in a two-way tie with Toronto Titans’ Italian international Lorenzo Zazzeri for silver in the men’s 50-metre freestyle that was won narrowly by Carter’s London Roar teammate and Australian Olympian Kyle Chalmers (21.10).
The rest of the swimmers in the final were Aqua Centurions (AC) representative Vladislav Grinev (21.35), Kristian Gkolomeev (21.50) of Carter’s former team LA Current, Titan’s Yuri Kisil (21.54), LA Current’s French import Maxime Rooney (21.58) and AC’s Alessandro Miressi (21.70).
Carter, the 2018 Commonwealth Games silver medallist, followed up that effort with a blistering anchoring leg in the men’s 4x100-metre freestyle relay, to see his London Roar to gold in 3:05.43. Chalmers led off in :46.04, followed by 46-second splits by teammates Katsumi Nakamura and Zac Incerti, before Carter pressed home the advantage.
“Two PBs (personal bests) for me!” exclaimed Carter, the former University of Southern California (USC) Trojan swimmer. “(I’m) happy with the times and it’s a great starting point, but definitely some details can be sharpened, it was my first time in the race pool since I’ve been here.”
Carter’s efforts helped his London Roar team to a comfortable first day lead as they topped the standings with 280.5 points ahead of the LA Current (246 pts), the Toronto Titans (231.5 pts) and the Aqua Centurions (138 pts).
The Tokyo 2020 Olympian revealed that today he would suit up in the men’s 50-metre butterfly individual event and the men’s 50-metre butterfly Skins event — that begins with eight swimmers with the top four advancing to the semi-final before the top two contest the final, with only a three-minute break separating each of those stages.