The record breaking, gold winning Caymanian Jillian Crooks continued her dominance Sunday at the CARIFTA Swimming Championships in Curaçao.
Crooks, 16, swam a blazing 26.08 seconds in the 50-metre freestyle sprint finals – the fastest recorded time by a female swimmer in the 36-year history of the championships.
In the prelims, Crooks, the youngest Olympian from the Cayman Islands, finished with a personal best swim of 26.15. However, her final swim later in the day would best the previous CARIFTA record of 26.12, set in 2011 by Suriname’s Chinyere Pigot.
“That swim was amazing,” Crooks told the Compass. “My coach told me to go out there, don’t focus [on] time and results; just go out there and execute the race and have fun.”
Crooks’ time was also just .16 seconds off a World Championship B-qualifying time. Her 50m performance follows her record of 56.44 in the 100m free, set on Saturday, where she snatched the longstanding time of 56.77, set in 2008.
Crooks now holds both sprint records for the CARIFTA Championships – which hasn’t been done by a 15-17 age group female swimmer in two decades.
Her performances helped lead Cayman to second position in the final medal table with an impressive haul of 53 medals, including 25 golds. The Bahamas was first with 85 medals, including 37 golds.
Night four also featured other top performances from Cayman’s athletes, like Harper Barrowman, who added the 400m gold medal to her previous freestyle wins in the 800m, 200m, and 1500m distances during the championships. James Allison claimed silver in the 15-17-year-old 400m free.
Sierrah Broadbelt and Riley Watson had the two top spots in the 200m backstroke final, with Broadbelt edging Watson for gold. Broadbelt also secured bronze in her 50m free final.
Lila Higgo kept the medals rolling in for Cayman, winning gold in the 200m back final. Will Sellars and Lev Fahy collected silver and bronze medals, respectively, in their age groups for the 200m back.
In the 13-14 girls 4×50 relay, Broadbelt, Watson, Eva Oldfield and Reagan Lisle initially took fourth but a disqualification deemed them a bronze medal.
The Cayman gold winning sprint team of Crooks, Barrowman, Higgo and Sofia Bonati, who assembled on day one for 4x100m, returned Sunday night for the 4×50 free. The team delivered on their expectations, taking gold in 1:48.62.
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