USA-based T&T swimmer Dylan Carter of Team Elite Aquatics placed sixth in the men’s 100 metres butterfly B-Final on the second day of competition at the 2021 TYR Pro Swim Series hosted by USA Swimming on Friday morning.
Swimming from lane four at the Marguerite Aquatics Center, Mission Viejo, California, the 25-year-old got a good start and was in the first spot at the halfway stage with a split of 24.66 seconds, ahead of Hugo Gonzalez (24.61) and Zheng Quah (24.66).
However, Carter, a University of Southern California (USC) graduate slowed on the second half of the race with a time of 28.88, the seventh fastest of the eight competitors to fade to the sixth spot in 53.34.
Gonzalez who raced home in 27.53 over the second half of the race won the B-Final in a lifetime best 52.14 in arguably one of his weaker strokes, his first time under 53 seconds.
Nicolas Albiero of Louisville was second, also breaking 53 at 52.99 ahead of Quah (53.11) while Giles Smith (53.16) and Zach Harting (53.22) ended fourth and fifth, respectively.
Kaan Ayar ended in the seventh spot in 53.66 ahead of Dillon Hillis, who ended in 55.20.
In the A-Final, USA’s Caeleb Dressel, the American and World record holder in the event dropped 51.61 seconds with a big swim out of lane one following his 200m freestyle win to claim his second victory on the day.
Second to the wall was Luis Martinez in 51.77 while third went to Cal Aquatics’ Andrew Seliskar in 52.21 as he dropped time after his 200m freestyle from earlier. He led a couple of Golden Bears, with 100 back World Record-holder Ryan Murphy fourth in 52.27 and Tom Shields fifth in 52.39. The trio of Santiago Grassi (53.11), Eric Friese (53.25) and Michael Andrew (54.60) were the other finishers in the A-Final.
On Thursday night, Carter, a recent winner of the 2020 First Citizen Sports Foundation “Sportsman of the Year” award to add to his T&T Olympic Committee accolade he collected last December, just missed out on qualifying to the men’s A-final of the 100m butterfly. This after he was the ninth-best swimmer overall in the heats.
Carter, swimming in heat three of four in the 100 butterfly, ended in the third spot in 52.95, one spot overall, and .09 hundredths of a second out of the A-final places.
The top two finishers in heat three were Shields in 52.17 for the second-fastest time overall, and Andrew in 52.43, the fourth-fastest qualifying time for the A-final.
The other finishers in Carter’s heat were Harting (52.43), Hillis (54.04), Harry Homans (55.32), and Abraham De Vine (55.92) while Tomer Frankel failed to face the starter.
In addition to Shields and Andrews, the swimmers advancing to the A-final from the three other heats were Martinez, the winner of heat four and fastest of the field in 51.96 along with World and US Open record holder Dressel (52.60) and Grassi (52.86) and the trio of Seliskar (52.31), Friese (52.43) and Murphy (52.59) from heat two.
On Friday night (8.32 pm TT time), Carter, T&T’s first-ever Commonwealth Games swimming medallist, will compete in the freestyle as the 13th seed (22.44) in the field of 37 which includes Dressel, Bruno Fratas, Andrew, Nathan Adrian, Santo Condorelli and Michael Chadwick all listed to face the starter in the heats as well with the A and B finals listed for today (Saturday).
And also on Saturday (9.13 pm), he is scheduled to swim in the 46-man field 100m freestyle as the fifth-seeded swimmer with a time of 48.52 alongside Dressel, Zach Apple, Dean Farris, Adrian, Condorelli, Chadwick and Fratas ahead of the A and B finals on Sunday.
Earlier this year in February. Carter competed at the three-day 2012 Federation France Swimming International FFN Camille Muffat Golden Tour Meeting De Nice in France.
He was fifth in the 50 metres freestyle A-final in seconds, 22.95 a big improvement on his preliminary heats time of 23.13.
His top performance over the three days came when he earned a silver medal in the men’s 50 metres butterfly in 24.07 seconds to trail Maxime Grousset who won in 23.38 while Sergei Comte took bronze in 24.17.
In the 50m butterfly preliminaries, Carter won the fifth and final heat in 24.13 seconds.
Carter also mounted a challenge for a podium finish in the 100m backstroke but ended in fifth in his semifinal in 55.94 seconds for the ninth spot to miss the final by .02 hundredths of a second behind Greece’s Evangelos Makrygiannis (55.92).
He was also in the 50m backstroke in 25.76 after he clocked 25.72 in the heats, and seventh in the 100m freestyle in 50.14 seconds, after he clocked 49.89 in the heats.