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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Zuri Ferguson third in Heat 2 at Paris Olympics

by

351 days ago
20240730

Sev­en­teen-year-old T&T swim­ming star­let Zuri Fer­gu­son could not hide the un­bri­dled joy of youth af­ter mak­ing her de­but at the Olympic Games in Paris, France.

Yes­ter­day in the swim­ming pool at the Paris La De­fense Are­na, Fer­gu­son touched the wall in third place in heat two of the women’s 100-me­tre back­stroke in a time of one minute and 02.75 sec­onds to fin­ish 27th over­all from 36 par­tic­i­pants. She did not ad­vance as on­ly the 16 fastest from the heats qual­i­fy for the semi­fi­nals.

“It was so great to be out here with the best, and I am glad to have got­ten the op­por­tu­ni­ty. There is so much to learn from to­day,” she said af­ter her his­toric Olympic de­but.

“It was an ho­n­our to start off this way for T&T; every­one in the camp has been very ac­com­mo­dat­ing,” added Fer­gu­son, who fin­ished be­hind Aviv Barze­lay (1:02.30) of Is­rael and Kazak­stan’s Xeniya Ig­na­to­va (1:02.51). No swim­mer from the heat pro­gressed to the next round.

Ques­tioned on the race it­self, Fer­gu­son, who has a best time of 1.01.06 but fin­ished the event in 1.02.75, ad­mit­ted, “Def­i­nite­ly it was not my best race, but I am pret­ty sat­is­fied and I feel I have learned a lot, and now I want to be back here in 2028.

“I have been able to watch what is work­ing, ob­serve it, and use it go­ing for­ward. Now I will watch the oth­er events and en­joy be­ing with the team and sup­port­ing them in any way I can for the next few days,” not­ed the T&T swim­mer. 

Zuri’s par­ents are from T&T. Her fa­ther, An­dré Fer­gu­son, is from Siparia, and her moth­er, Ca­ri­na Newal­lo-Fer­gu­son, is from Bel­mont.

She point­ed out that “both of my par­ents are sports-mind­ed peo­ple; my dad used to play foot­ball, and they con­tin­ue to be very sup­port­ive, and with­out them, I would not be here to­day.”

Zuri, who was born in the USA and will be at­tend­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da in 2025, told Guardian Me­dia, “I have not de­cid­ed what field I want to spe­cialise in as yet, but I al­so want to tell all young peo­ple to nev­er give up on their dreams and just keep try­ing, and you will achieve. I al­ways want­ed to come to the Olympics but nev­er ex­pect­ed it to hap­pen now, so I am dri­ven to do even bet­ter in 2028.”

Zuri, who com­pet­ed at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Swim­ming Con­fed­er­a­tion Cham­pi­onship in Mex­i­co, set­ting meet records in the 15-17-year-old 50m back­stroke, 100m back­stroke, and 200m back­stroke events in the first quar­ter of 2024, and re­sides with her par­ents in the USA, said when she re­turns to T&T, it’s an ex­cit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I love it; I come all the time, and just the at­mos­phere, the fam­i­ly, and the peo­ple are great,” she said.

Ques­tioned about her favourite “Tri­ni” food, Zuri had to think for a while and then said, “It’s prob­a­bly be­tween dou­bles and mac­a­roni pie, but I love how I have been get­ting so much pos­i­tiv­i­ty from the peo­ple and every­one here at the camp.”

Women’s back­stroke 100m Heat 2 re­sults

1. Aviv Barze­lay (Is­rael) - 1:02.30

2. Xeniya Ig­na­to­va (Kaza­khstan) - 1:02.51

3. Zuri Fer­gu­son (Trinidad and To­ba­go) - 1:02.75

4. Lucero Mejia (Guatemala) - 1:03.42

5. Sum Yuet Cindy Che­ung (Hong Kong) - 1:03.45

6. Amani Alobaidli (Bahrain) - 1:04.27

7. Celi­na Márquez (El Sal­vador) - 1:04.55

8.Eliz­a­beth Jimenez (Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic) - 1:04.99


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