Nigel Si­mon

Chris­t­ian Mars­den se­cured this coun­try's first gold medal of the 20th Caribbean Is­lands Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship when he won the 14-17 Boys 5K Open Wa­ter swim at Car­lyle Bay, St Michael's Bar­ba­dos on Mon­day.

Mars­den was the first home in his age-group in one hour, 06.53 min­utes and was al­so award­ed the Cham­pi­on Tro­phy for his per­for­mance in that age group.

Sec­ond was an­oth­er T&T en­trant in Kael Yorke who clocked 1.07:03 hrs.

Among girls, Syr­i­ah David got sil­ver in the 14-17 cat­e­go­ry in 1.07:47 while sis­ter Sha­nia David won the bronze in a time of 1.11:53 to go with her sil­ver in the 10K on Sun­day at the same venue.

In the 18 & Over com­pe­ti­tion, Theana Hay al­so earned a sec­ond sil­ver in 1:10.20 to add to her Sun­day's medal in the 10K as well.

This brings the to­tal medal haul to sev­en for T&T at the end of the Open Wa­ter com­pe­ti­tion which makes way for the swim­ming com­pe­ti­tion that splash­es off to­day at the Aquat­ic Cen­tre, Wildey.

Lead­ing the medal hunt for the T&T team–which fi­nal­ly ar­rived in Bar­ba­dos ear­ly yes­ter­day af­ter be­ing de­layed at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port be­cause of a Caribbean Air­lines pi­lot 'sick-out'–will be North Amer­i­can-based duo, Alexan­dria Don­ahue and Ty­la Mar­tin, and Joshua Ramkissoon who will make their re­turn to the na­tion­al swim­ming team af­ter skip­ping the Carif­ta Games ear­li­er this year due to school com­mit­ments.

To­day, the 100m back­stroke, 1500m freestyle, 100m breast­stroke, 50m freestyle and 200m in­di­vid­ual med­ley and 400m med­ley re­lay events will take place. In ad­di­tion to T&T and host Bar­ba­dos, the 18 oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries at the CISC event in­clude An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Aru­ba, Ba­hamas, Bermu­da, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Cay­man Is­lands, Cu­ba, Cu­ra­cao, Do­mini­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Grena­da, Ja­maica, Puer­to Ri­co, St Kitts/Nevis, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and The Grenadines, Turks & Caicos and US Vir­gin Is­lands.

Two years ago, in Aru­ba, the host coun­try emerged as over­all cham­pi­ons with 1,411 points and 69 medals (26 gold, 22 sil­ver and 21 bronze) to end T&T's run of two straight ti­tles. T&T had to set­tle for this time around with 74 medals (26 gold, 26 sil­ver and 22 bronze) for 911 points.