Rough going in Athens for Caribbean competitors

ATHENS: English-speaking Caribbean competitors were off to a rough start in swimming, shooting and badminton on the first morning of full competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics yesterday. Trinidad and Tobago’s Roger Daniel failed to make it past the qualification stage shooting 574 in the preliminaries of the 10-metre air pistol event and failed to advance to the medal round. None of the swimmers advanced beyond the preliminaries, Jamaica’s badminton champion Nigella Saunders found the fourth seed too hot to handle, and the shooters struggled in qualifying. In the men’s 400 metres individual medley, Bahamian Jeremy Knowles was the best of the Caribbean swimming trio at the Aquatic Centre, finishing well on the freestyle phase to take third in heat two in four minutes, 23.29 seconds for a 22nd ranking in the event.

Barbadian Bradley Ally, fourth in the same heat in 4:24.70, was 25th overall, and the Cayman Islands’ Andrew MacKay got 33rd overall after placing second in heat one in 4:32.38. Top American Michael Phelps, beginning his bid to equal the record of seven Olympic swimming gold medals by Mark Spitz (Munich 1972), dominated his heat in 4:13.29 and was easily the quickest advancing from the 400 IM preliminaries. Two hours after his 400 IM swim, Ally contested heat four of the men’s 100-metre breaststroke and placed fifth in 1:04.71. St Lucian Natasha George started well in her 100-metre butterfly swim, but faded to sixth in 1:07.94. Australia’s two-time Commonwealth Games champion Petria Thomas (57.47) beat reigning Olympic champion Inge de Bruijn (58.47) of the Netherlands into third spot in heat five to advance as the fastest qualifier in the 100-fly.

Saunders, the Pan Am Games and Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games champion, never threatened the highly rated Audina and fell at the first hurdle in the women’s badminton singles. The Indonesia-born, fourth-seed Audina, who was a silver medallist at the Atlanta Olympics and quarter-finalist four years ago in Sydney, knocked off Saunders 11-4, 11-1, in only 16 minutes on court. The odds were against Saunders facing the world-rated Audina, who outplayed her with speed and high quality shots. In shooting, Jamaican Dawn-Marie Kobayashi placed 41st of the 43 competitors in qualifying with a series total of 383 after registering scores of 98, 93, 97, 95. Russian Lioubov Galkina topped qualifying with an Olympic record total of 399, comprising series scores of 98, 100, 100, and 100. (CMC)