T&T’s Dy­lan Carter and his Lon­don Roar team­mates con­tin­ued their dom­i­nance of the men’s 4x100 me­tres freestyle at the 2021 In­ter­na­tion­al Swim­ming League with yet an­oth­er vic­to­ry, on Thurs­day’s open­ing day of the fourth Match Day play­off semi­fi­nal in Eind­hoven, Hol­land.

Buoyed by their Match Day Four semi­fi­nal play­off win last week­end, two-time Olympian the 25-year-old Carter swim­ming the lead-off leg from lane five at the Pieter Van Den Hoogen­band Sta­di­um for the Lon­don Roar, found him­self in the sec­ond spot at the end of the first leg with the T&T swim­mer's 46.39 sec­onds, on­ly bet­tered by En­er­gy Stan­dard’s Kli­ment Kolesnikov’s 46.24.

How­ev­er, on the sec­ond-leg, Zac In­cer­ti’s clocked 46.87 which saw the Roar slip to third with a com­bined 1:33.26, be­hind LA Cur­rent, which jumped from third (46.40) boost­ed by Apos­to­los Chris­tou’s 46.40 for a com­bined 1:32.39, and En­er­gy Stan­dard’s 1:33.17 af­ter Adam Bar­rett’s 46.93.

But on the third leg, the Lon­don Roar made their move thanks to Dun­can Scott’s siz­zling 46.09 to re­claim the sec­ond spot with a 2:19.35 tim­ing, on­ly be­hind LA Cur­rent’s 2:19.19 pow­ered by Kris­t­ian Gkolomeev’s 46.80 while DC Tri­dent re­placed En­er­gy Stan­dard in third be­hind Zach Hart­ing’s 46.55 with a com­bined 2;20.70.

It was still any­body’s race at the start of the fourth and fi­nal leg, but in the end, Lon­don Roar with in-form Aus­tralian Kyle Chalmers clock­ing an elec­tri­fy­ing 45.12 af­ter a split of 21.37, both the fastest event showed their class with a com­bined 3:04.47 for gold in the fastest time of the ISL this sea­son, and 36 valu­able points.

The LA Cur­rent end­ed in the sec­ond spot in 3:05.38 for 14 points while DC Tri­dent was third in 3:08.42 and 12 points, and En­er­gy Stan­dard, fourth in 3:08.59 for ten points.

How­ev­er, in the 20th and fi­nal event on the first day, Carter swam an­chor as part of the 4x100 med­ley re­lay team which al­so com­prised Chris­t­ian Di­ener, Sam Williamson and Vi­ni Lan­za for the fifth spot in 3:24.56, just be­hind their Lon­don Roar ‘A’ team­mates of Guil­herme Gui­do,  Ross Mur­doch, Chalmers and Scott who placed fourth in 3:24.16.

En­er­gy Stan­dard took gold in 3:21.36 with LA Cur­rent (3:23.66) sec­ond, and DC Tri­dent, third in 3:23.81.

In the men’s 50m freestyle, Carter had hoped to join Olympic medal win­ner George Bovell III (20.90 & 20.94) as the lone T&T swim­mers to go un­der the 21-sec­ond bar­ri­er in the event.

How­ev­er, the Cal­i­for­nia-born T&T swim­mer had to set­tle for the fourth spot in a very high-qual­i­ty field in 21.14, just off his per­son­al best of 21.09 he sat last week­end in an­oth­er fourth-place fin­ish.

His Lon­don Roar team, Aus­tralian three-time Olympic medal­list Chalmers (20.82) fought off the chal­lenge of En­er­gy Stan­dard’s Ben Proud (20.86) with his char­ac­ter­is­tic back-end speed to pro­pel him­self to the wall 0.04 ahead for the vic­to­ry while LA Cur­rent’s Gkolomeev took bronze in 21.06.

The pair of Chris­tou (LA Cur­rent) and Ryan Hof­fer (DC Tri­dent), both clocked 21.32 for joint fifth spot with En­er­gy Stan­dard’s An­drey Zhilkin, sev­enth in 21.58, and DC Tri­dent’s Sergey Shevtsov who placed eighth in 21.72.

Ja­maican Alia Atkin­son al­so con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to Lon­don Roar’s first-day points tal­ly as she was won in­di­vid­ual gold in the women’s 50m breast­stroke in 29.18 sec­onds and was part of the gold medal 4x100 med­ley women’s re­lay win­ning team, while she al­so had a sixth-place fin­ish in the 100m  but­ter­fly in 57.32.

Over­all, it was very pro­duc­tive for the Lon­don Roar as they look to lock up a top-three fin­ish over the two days of com­pe­ti­tion to ce­ment a spot in the four-team Fi­nal, De­cem­ber 3 and 4 at the same venue.

Go­ing in­to Fri­day’s sec­ond and fi­nal day of the Match Day play­off Carter, who has now tak­en his ISL sea­son medal haul to 17 (sev­en gold, six sil­ver, and four bronze) and the Lon­don Roar leads with 280 points, with En­er­gy Stan­dard sec­ond with 264, fol­lowed by LA Cur­rent, a dis­tant third with 221.6, and DC Tri­dent, fourth with 141.5.

Cur­rent­ly, the trio of En­er­gy Stan­dard, Lon­don Roar, and Cali Con­dors are in a three-way tie at the top of the stand­ings with sev­en points each from two of three semi­fi­nal match days while fourth-placed LA Cur­rent has six points.

The quar­tet of Toron­to Ti­tans (five), Aqua Cen­tu­ri­ons (three), DC Tri­dent (three), and Team Iron (two) com­plete the ta­ble with one Match Day left for each team.

And with four points be­ing award­ed to the over­all Match Day win­ners, three for the sec­ond spot, two for third, and one for fourth, the Lon­don Roar just needs to com­plete a top-three fin­ish of the four teams to be as­sured of their fi­nals post, well with­in their reach with on­ly 19 events left Fri­day.

So far in the sec­ond stage of the 2021 ISL, Carter has now won eight medals in the semi­fi­nal play­offs, in­clu­sive of three re­lay gold medals, three sil­ver, and two bronze.

On Sat­ur­day (No­vem­ber 20), Carter won gold in the 4x100 me­tres freestyle re­lay, and sil­ver in the 4x100m med­ley re­lay, while on Sun­day he got bronze in both the 100m freestyle and 4x100m mixed med­ley re­lay events as Lon­don Roar topped the ta­ble.

The four medals fol­lowed his re­turn of one gold and two sil­ver medals in the sec­ond Match Day semi­fi­nal play­off in which his team was edged out by LA Cur­rent for the top spot.

When the pre­lim­i­nary ten rounds of com­pe­ti­tion con­clud­ed last month in Naples, Italy, Carter, T&T's first-ever Com­mon­wealth Games swim­ming medal win­ner, had bagged nine medals in to­tal, four gold, three sil­ver, and two bronze which helped his team to 13 points from a max­i­mum of 16 and third spot on the ten-club stand­ings to be among the au­to­mat­ic semi­fi­nal qual­i­fiers.