Vincentian bronze medallist breaks St Lucia’s national swimming record

CARIFTA Bronze medallist Shne Joachim continues to demonstrate that she is one of the fastest swimmers in the region.{{more}}

In the 14th RHAC International Swim Meet held in St Lucia last weekend, Shne set her mark by breaking the St Lucian national record in the girls’ 50 m breaststroke, in a time of 36.5 seconds.

The Swim Meet, held from April 11 to 14, involved over 350 swimmers from 18 swim clubs in the region. St Vincent’s Black Sand Swim Squad took 12 swimmers to compete in this event.

Shne also won all of the breaststroke disciplines in her age group (11-12). 14-year-old Storm Halbich put in his best performance to date, claiming gold in the 100 m backstroke, in a personal best time of 1 minute 13 seconds.

Among the 12 Vincentian Black Sand swimmers, eight gold, five silver and six bronze medals were won. The Black Sand swimmers who attended the event were Isabella and Leah Bollers, Isabelle Brackin, Adora Lawrence, Shne and Alex Joachim, Cruz and Storm Halbich, Dillon and Joshua Gooding, Roy Bradshaw, Sarah Smith and Kyle Dougan.

Coach Kyle Dougan commented “Every swimmer put in a fantastic performance and did themselves and St Vincent proud. The swimmers have trained extremely hard and have done extremely well to be able to out perform swimmers from the other countries like Barbados, St Lucia and Grenada, who all have much better swimming pool facilities than we currently have in St Vincent. At some point, a bigger swimming pool will be needed in St Vincent to give our swimmers the chance to train better and continue to bring gold medals home to St Vincent.”