T&T's Dylan Carter followed up his fourth placed finish in the men's 200m freestyle final at the 13th FINA World Short Course (25m) Swimming Championships on Wednesday night by advancing to last night's 50m butterfly semifinal at the WFCU Centre, Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
This after Carter, a second year University of Southern California student athlete was fourth fastest in heat 11 of 13 and ninth best overall, in 22.85 seconds to trail the trio of Japan's Takeshi Kawamoto (22.62), Russian Aleksandr Popkov (22.68) and USA's Tom Shields (22.79) who were the second, third and seventh fastest qualifiers respectively.
Finland's Riku Poytakivi (23.30), Lithuanian Deividas Margevicius (23.42), USA's Matthew Josa (23.49) and Bosnia-Herzegovina's Adi Mesetovic (24.39) were the other finishers in heat 11 while the pair of France's Mehdy Metella and Uzbekistan's Artyom Kozlyu failed to face the starter
Brazilian Nicholas Santos was the fastest home overall when he won the 12th heat in 22.53 seconds ahead of fellow semifinal qualifier in Australian David Morgan (22.69), and Ukraine's Andrii Govorov (23.07).
Venezuelan Albert Subirats won heat nine in 22.75 to earn his spot among the top 16 qualifiers and was joined by heat eight winner, Mexico's Daniel Carranza (22.89) while Great Britain's Adam Barrett (22.76), South African Chad Le Clos (22.84), Belurusian Yauhen Tsurkin (22.85), Ukraine's Andrii Khloptsov (23.01), Belurusian Pavel Sankovich (23.09), Russia's Daniil Pakhomov (23.19) and Lithuanian Mindaugas Sadauskas (23.22) all qualified from the final heat.
Last night, Carter contested the second semifinal from lane two alongside, Govorov, Subirats, Santos, Popkov, Shields, Carranza and Sadauskas while Pakhomov, Tsurkin, Barrett, Kawamoto, Morgan, Le Clos, the Olympic, World and Commonwealth Games champion as well as the Commonwealth record holder in the 50m and 100m butterfly, Khloptsov and China's Zhuhao Li lined up in the first semifinal.
Li touched touched the wall in 23.29 seconds and was 18th best overall to miss automatic qualification to the semifinals.
However, he got in after Sankovic (14th) opted out along with Spain's Miguel Ortiz-Canavate (17th), who was the best non-qualifier in 23.27, but also declined. The final of the event is carded for 8.10pm tonight (TT time)
Today, Carter a career six-time All-American and three-time NCAA and Pac-12 relay champion, will first focus on the men's 100m freestyle where he swims in the penultimate heat of 16.