36th Sacos School Swimming Championship 2018 |19 March 2018

Seven records broken

Tyler Fred from Plaisance secondary school, Adam Moncherry and Nicole Grasselli Barni from International School Seychelles (ISS) and Alina Muslun from Independent School were the main heroes of the Sacos-sponsored National Inter-School Swimming Championships dominated by Independent School with six of the 10 cups.

The finals of the yearly competition took place on Friday at the Roche Caïman pools.

Fred, Moncherry, Grasselli Barni and Muslun broke six individual records between them to go with the 4x 50m freestyle relay team best time clocked by the International School Seychelles’ male 16 years and over team.

Swimming in the 25m pool in the girls’ 10-11 years category, Muslun led from the start to win the 50m backstroke in a record time of 38.38 seconds to erase the old record of 39.26 belonging to Aisha Khan since 2015.

“It was quite tiring and tough and I was not expecting to break the record but I am happy to have achieved it,” Muslun told Sports NATION.

In the boys’ 14-15 years category in the 50m pool, Fred touched the wall in 30.63 seconds to break one of the oldest records in Seychelles’ swimming ‒ the male 14-15 years 50m backstroke best of 31.00 seconds belonging to Kenny Roberts which had stood for 25 years as it was set in 1993.

The 15-year-old got a second record on the day as he won the male 14-15 years 50m butterfly in 27.75 seconds to erase the old record of 28.09 seconds belonging to Adam Viktora since 2011.

“I was expecting to break at least a record as I have been training very hard lately,” Fred told Sports NATION.

Another athlete who wrote his name in the record books is Adam Moncherry and he did it twice. Moncherry made the male 16 years and over category 50m butterfly record his by stopping the clock at 26.69 seconds to erase from the record books Kenny Roberts’ old record of 26.84 seconds set in 1994.

He had in his first race improved his own 50m freestyle record of 25.53 seconds with a new time of 24.81 seconds.

Speaking to Sports NATION, Moncherry said: “It feels really good to have broken two records considering I didn’t really prepare for this competition. So, it puts me in the right frame of mind for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games and hopefully there will be more national records”.

In the girls’ 16 years and over 50m freestyle, Nicole Grasselli Barni clocked 30.19 seconds to get a new record, thus erasing the 30.66 seconds mark belonging to Anisha Payet since 2016.

The last record to fall was in the male 16 years and over category  4x50m freestyle relay with the International School quartet lowering the old record of 1 minute 51.42 seconds (1:51.42) belonging to the Seychelles Polytechnic since 2014, to 1:51.19 for a new record.

Swimmers in the 7-9 and 10-12 years categories swam in the smaller 25m pool while the bigger ones falling in the 12-13, 14-15 and 16 years and over classes competed in the Olympic size (50m) pool.

The Independent School won six out of the 10 cups on offer and they dominated the following categories ‒ boys’ 7-9 years (49 points), boys’ 10-11 years (69 points), girls’ 10-11 years (40 points), boys’ 14-15 years (49 points), girls’ 14-15 years (59 points) and girls’ 16 years and over (61 points).

Plaisance secondary school won the boys’ 12-13 years (66 points) and girls’ 12-13 years (63 points) categories, while Fleuri primary school won the cup for girls’ 7-9 years (37 points) and International School Seychelles (ISS) took that for boys’ 16 years and over (81 points).

P. J.