XXVII Carifta Swimming Championships…Jessica Stephenson swims to gold in 200m breast; van Lange in action today

Guyana’s top female swimmer Jessica Stephenson has continued her

Jessica Stephenson (left) and Britany van Lange.

dominance of the region at the Carifta level when she swam to another gold medal and the first for Guyana this year in the 200m breatstroke at the XXVII Carifta Swimming Championships which started yesterday in Nassau, Bahamas and continues through Sunday.
Headlining Team Guyana’s chances is Stephenson along with another promising Guyanese, Britany van Lange, team Coach is Shyka Gonsalves.
The team arrived in the Bahamas on Tuesday, April 10th with both swimmers eager to improve their chances of representing Guyana at the London 2012 Olympic Games by attaining new Personal Best Times and rising in the FINA points rankings.
Immediately, however, Jessica is defending her historic gold medal sweep of the breaststroke events which she achieved at Carifta 2011 in the land of the Flying Fish, Barbados.
Stephenson was the first Guyanese in the pool yesterday, swimming her best event – the 200m breaststroke. She went into the preliminaries seeded second with an entry time of 2:43.32 and swam well within her capability to earn a place in last evening’s final seeded third.
When the waves of the final had settled, Stephenson had a firm grip on her first gold medal with a time of 2:42.20 – more than two seconds ahead of 2nd placed Breanna Roman of Jamaica, who finished in 2:44.36.  This swim earned Jessie 644 points on the FINA scale.
Today, van Lange swims her first event of the Championships – the 200m Freestyle – in which she is seeded 13th with an entry time of 2:15.88.
Both Stephenson (breaststroke) and van Lange (freestyle) are swimming in the 15-17 age-group and both are swimming 50m, 100m and 200m events.