Irby gold the highlight of CARIFTA day two

The heats for day two at the CARIFTA Swimming Championships were very successful as Bermuda  had 12 individual finals and the two relays in Aruba.

The night started with the girls relay receiving their medal from the night before, which seemed to be a great omen for what was to come. 

Ashley Irby was up first in the 200 free where she had qualified in fourth position.  She was in great position after the 100 metre mark and then surged into the lead.  By the time they reached the final 50 she began to pull away from the field.  Her gold medal swim also gave her the 11-12 Bermuda record by two seconds, taking it from Ashley Yearwood who had set it in 2007.

Next in the pool was Shannon Hassell, who put in a great effort but was unable to produce a medal swim. Jesse Washington rounded out the 200 event with an amazing battle that came down to the touch.  Jesse ended with the silver but he had also lowered his own Bermuda record by one second.

The next event was the 50 fly and Emma Harvey was first up.  This race was extremely impressive with both Emma and her competitor crushing the Carifta record by going 29 mid. Emma claimed the silver in a hard-fought final.

Ethan Daley was looking to add to the medal tally but after leading most of the race he had to settle for fourth-place finish.  Jesse had a quick turnaround from the 200 free to the 50 fly and he lead the rest to the wall but was touched out at the wall, capturing the bronze.

The 100 back saw us swim the rest of our individual events for the evening with Emma Harvey leading the way again.  Emma swam a gutsy race in trying to beat her much bigger competitor and was able to capture another silver to add to her medal tally. 

Ethan Daley and Brett Smith were next in their 100 back and both lowered their personal best times from the morning swims, finishing just outside the medals.

Maddy Moore and Shannon Hassell were both in the 13-14 girls final and they were both aware of the speed of the number one seed from Cayman.  They gave it a great effort and in the end Maddy captured the silver and Shannon took the bronze. 

Jesse finished the backstrokes for the evening and our individual events but the fatigue of so many back-to-back events caught up with him in at 25 meters and left him outside the medals. 

We finished the session with the girls relay of Alyssa Paynter, Izzy Dutranoit, Ashley Irby and Emma Harvey finishing in 6^th place.  The boys team of Jude Moseley, Brett Smith, Alex Pilgrim and Ethan Daley had a very good swim and finished in 6^th place also.

In all day 2 was very successful for the young Bermuda team.  With 12 finals they produced 7 medals, multiple records and moved the total medal count to 11.