17th Fina World Masters Championships – Budapest |22 August 2017

Minister Adam represents Seychelles away from diplomatic spotlight

The International Swimming Federation (Fina) World Masters Swimming Championships take place every two years, with athletes older than 25 years old competing against each other and at this year’s competition in Budapest, Hungary, Seychelles was represented by non-other than former swimming star Jean-Paul Adam.

Now a minister and responsible for the portfolio of health, Adam will be remembered as one of the country’s top swimmers and he has competed in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the 1994 World Swimming Championships in Rome, the 1998 World Swimming Championships in Perth, Australia, the 1998 Commonwealth Games, the 2002 Commonwealth Games and the 2003 World Swimming Championships in Barcelona.

He won a bronze medal at the 1999 All-Africa Games in Johannesburg, South Africa in the 4 x 200 metre freestyle relay. Moreover, in the Indian Ocean Island Games (IOIG) held in Seychelles, Reunion and Mauritius in 1993, 1998 and 2003 respectively, he also won silver and bronze medals.

In Budapest, Adam swam the 50m, 100m and 200m butterfly events in the 40-44 age group category and twice finished among the top 10.

In the 100m butterfly event, Adam clocked 1 minute 01.43 seconds (1:01.43) which was enough to get him a 10th place finish among 47 other swimmers. In fact, the winners of this race could not be separated as Poland’s Marcin Kaczmarek and Claus Lerche Iversen of Denmark both touched the wall in 57.66 seconds to finish as joint gold medallists.

Greek, Vasileios Kapenis was third in a time of 57.97 seconds.

Adam achieved his best performance in the 200m butterfly event where he was placed eighth out of 25 starters, finishing the race in a time of 2:25.25.

Iversen of Denmark this time won the gold medal on his own with a time of 2:09.96 and was followed in second place by Germany’s Jochen Hanz who took 2:13.92 to finish the race. The bronze medal went to Vasileios Kapenis of Greece with 2:19.00.

In the 50m butterfly event, Adam faced his biggest test as he competed against 113 other swimmers. Here, he finished 27th with a time of 27.96 seconds.

Argentina’s Pablo Abal won gold in a time of 25.66 seconds, with Russia’s Alexey Khovrin winning silver with his time of 25.78 seconds, while the bronze medal was won by Brian Jacobson of USA with a time of 26.10 seconds.

S. N.