GUYANA’S team to this year’s CARIFTA Swimming Championships, which included Britany van Lange and Soroya Simmons, returned home on Sunday after performing at the event over the weekend in Savaneta, Aruba.The duo participated in four races apiece at the event which ran from April 22 to 26. The height of their performance was when they each managed to get into the final of their events .
Simmons made it into the final of the girls’ 15-17 200m backstroke where she swam 2:41.92s, after clocking 2:39.03s in the preliminaries. The overall victory in the race went to Daniell Boothe who finished in 2:26.92s in the final.
The 200m backstroke was Simmons’ final race at the event following her performance in the 50m freesyle and the 50m and 100m backstrokes.
The Goodwill Swimming Championship bronze medallist failed to place in the 50m backstroke after she finished 12th in a time of 34.58 seconds, managing to take a second off the 35.08 second seed’s time that she entered the competition with. The event was won by Trinidad’s Kristen Julien who clocked 29.84 seconds.
A similar situation played out in the 100m backstroke where Simmons clocked 1:13.71s with a 1:16.91s entry time.
Simmons also swam in the 50m freestyle, on Friday, where she once again failed to place. However, van Lange, also swimming in the Girls 15-17 category, managed to make it into the final of this event.
The Olympian entered with a time of 28.15 seconds and qualified when she swam a time of 28.60 seconds. In the final van Lange was still unable to improve her entry time and did a 28.60 seconds finish.
van Lange also competed in the 50m butterfly (32.29s), the 100m freestyle (1:03.58s) and 200m freestyle (2:23.11s).
The pair attended the event with team coach/manager Stephanie Fraser.