From Joe Chapman in New York

Guyana’s Delroy Tyrrell continues his impressive swimming performances of recent in the New York, despite not being given a chance to represent his place of birth at the World Aquatics World Championships which gets underway from December 10-15 in Budapest, Hungary.
On Saturday young Tyrrell displayed a dominant swim meet record breaking performance when he smashed the 100 yards breast stroke record with a time of 51.18s to erase the previous record set by John Schnell, in 1995, at the Cortland Snow Flurries Meet in New York.
A couple hours later another meet record was broken. The old record of Kevin Rusch, in the 200 Yards backstroke done in 1983 in 1:56.90 was grabbed by Tyrrell in a new meet time of 1:54.93.
Speaking to Delroy after he commented: “It was two records established. I first broke the 100 yards backstroke record in the relay and it counts as I did the first leg, the record was 52.3 and I went 51.1 in that relay start.
Then I had the individual 100 yards backstroke win a few minutes later and I did 51. 3. So technically I broke it twice, but what they do in a situation like that, where you break a record twice, they just go with the faster time. And the next record I broke (on Saturday) was the 200 yards backstroke in 1:54.93 at the SUNY Cortland Campus pool in New York.”

It would be apt to recall that at previous Oneonta Meet in the ‘Big Apple,’ the Guyanese swimmer became the SUNYAC Men’s Swimmer of the Week the last week of November this year, for the second time this season, thus enabling his team Red Dragons to three wins, including two relay events at the Electric City Invitational also here in New York.

At that swim meet he walked away with the 50-yard freestyle with a time of at 21.87s, captured the 100-yard backstroke stopping the clock at 52.67, and also won the 200-yard backstroke in 1:59.31.
The young Guyana-born athlete was key in Oneonta’s 200-yard freestyle relay place win clocking 1:28.11 and the 200-yard medley relay victory at 1:37.14.
His team also was runner up in the 400-yard freestyle relay in a time of 3:18.99, and in the 400-yard medley relay was second in a time of 3:37.24.

In a recent interview outgoing President of the Guyana Amateur Swimming Association (GASA) Dwayne Scott in an exclusive interview told Chronicle Sport that Guyana is likely to be represented by female athlete Ms. Aleka Persaud, as fellow Olympian Raekwon Noel Noel is unavailable, for this year’s World Swimming Championships.

Scott also confirmed that Persaud’s name along with Vladimir Woodroof were the names of the athletes sent to World Aquatics, as hopes of Guyana’s next best male United States-based collegiate swimmer Delroy Tyrrell, who is in great touch showed rich on the United States was ignored by the GASA.
However, when questioned about reports that Woodruff had withdrawn from participating citing the omission of United States based swimmer Delroy Tyrrell, Scott said “I have not gotten an official statement from the athlete, and I am seeing things in the media.
It’s funny because this athlete came to me saying he was training for the World Championship, so the situation as it is was Raekwon Noel was not available, Leon Eaton said he wasn’t available and the next two athletes that are local, they were banned because of a situation we had with the pool, and their suspension ends in January. So, it was left for Woodroof to be selected and we informed the member of his club when we had that meeting.”

It was felt that in the absence of the number one choice Raekwon Noel who is also in the United States on scholarship not available, that his likely replacement should be Tyrrell.
However, is being regarded as an international athlete and because of this he was sidelined.
There was a meeting according to Scott where issues surrounding the non-inclusion of Tyrrell was addressed.

Scott mentioned that the Dorado Club which Tyrrell represents when in Guyana, was fully aware of the decision of the coaches and the athletes chosen, and the conditionalities surrounding Mr Tyrrell; because by law GASA rules an ‘international athlete’ has to qualify by timings.
Now, by virtue of Tyrrell accepting a US scholarship, the term ‘international athlete’ had placed Tyrrell at a seemingly greater disadvantage to be considered for selection, even if his performances are superior to local swimmers, which is disturbing to say the leas
The swimming official has termed it discrimination and a ruling which must be addressed by GASA, since swimmers with the potential to win scholarships works be skeptical to accept such.