The Trin­i­ty Mas­ters swim club arranged a cel­e­bra­tion swim from the Five Is­lands to the Care­nage jet­ty on Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 27 in ho­n­our of Gor­don Bor­de.

This was a repli­ca­tion of the swim that was staged by the Am­a­teur Swim­ming As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go (ASATT) on its first an­nu­al cross har­bour swim in No­vem­ber 1962.

That first race was won by Bor­de, who re­peat­ed in 1963 and 1964.

Some 26 swim­mers ac­com­pa­nied Bor­de on the 2,400 me­tres swim, in­clud­ing his son Richard, and grand­son Do­minic. The swim­mers were sent off in three waves, with Kester Scant­er­bury record­ing the best over­all time of 34 min­utes.

Mervyn Mar­quez, 87 years old, and a past ad­min­is­tra­tor of the Swim­ming As­so­ci­a­tion, was on hand to send off the swim­mers, 50 years lat­er. Mar­quez was al­so a na­tion­al wa­ter po­lo play­er and rep­re­sent­ed T&T at in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els. Mar­quez was pre­sent­ed with an ap­pre­ci­a­tion plaque by the Trin­i­ty Mas­ters swim club.

A plaque was al­so giv­en to Bor­de for 50 years of swim­ming and as­sist­ing with the de­vel­op­ment of open wa­ter swim­ming in the coun­try. Bor­de com­pet­ed in 75 open wa­ter events and still swims the an­nu­al open wa­ter around Gas­pa­ree Is­land, the Las Cuevas to Mara­cas swim, and the Mara­cas open wa­ter clas­sic.

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