2016 Rio Olympics - Labiche out with disappointing 1.85m jump |19 August 2016

Seychelles’ last athlete to compete at the 2016 Rio Olympic, Lissa Labiche, could not qualify for the women’s high jump final after clearing the bar at a disappointing 1.85m in her best performance.

Labiche was competing yesterday at the Olympic Stadium in Rio and she missed all her three attempts at 1.89m to finish far behind the final’s qualify height of 1.94m and even way off her Seychelles record of 1.92m set last year at the South African Open Athletics Championship.

This was her second time at the Olympic after also being invited to take part in London in 2012.

In the case where not enough athletes were able to clear the bar at 1.94m, the best 12 performers would qualify for the final and here also Labiche failed to make the grade after finishing joint 29th with Erika Kinsey of Sweden out of a total 35 jumpers.

The 12 best jumpers from yesterday’s qualifying event will now compete in the final on Sunday morning.

Labiche’s appearance marked the end for Seychelles at the Olympics after all our athletes completed their events at the games.

The highlight of Team Seychelles is no doubt Ned Azemia, the youngest member if the country’s delegation, who broke the 400m hurdles Seychelles junior and senior records, clocking 50.74 seconds on Tuesday August 16 to erase his own time of 51.09 seconds set on July 9 at Stad Popiler.

In sailing, Rodney Govinden finished in 45th place out of 46 in the Laser standard class, Allan Julie finished 23rd and last in the Finn class, while windsurfer Jean-Marc Gardette managed to finish the competition in 33rd place out of 36.

Judoka Dominic Dugasse was in action the -100kg category where he lost by ippon to Egypt’s Ramadan Darwish after one minute and 28 seconds on the mat.

In swimming, Adam Viktora competed in the 50m male freestyle heat 1, where despite finishing in second place, his time of 24.32 seconds was not enough to get qualification to the next round.

Female swimmer Alexus Laird was the first Seychellois athlete to compete at the games and she clocked 1 minute 03.33 seconds (1:03.33) to finish third in her heat and 27th overall out of 34 swimmers in the 100m backstroke.

Boxer Andrique Allisop also competed early on for Seychelles and he met Irish Oliver David Joyce in a first round fight of the men’s light weight (60kg) and lost.

Allisop finished on the losing end on a 0-3 score after the three judges scored the bout 30-27, 29-28 and 30-27 in favour of Joyce.

Lastly, weightlifter Rick Confiance was ranked 13th in the 62kg weight class. Confiance registered 105kg in snatch and 127kg in clean & jerk for an Olympic total of 232kg – 6kg below his best performance of 238kg (108kg in snatch and 130kg in clean & jerk).

Seychelles has never won a medal at the Olympic Games and with all our athletes now out of the games, the search for that elusive medal goes on, with the next attempt due to take place in Tokyo, Japan for the 2020 Olympic Games. The games are planned to be held from July 24 to August 9, 2020.

These games will see the return of baseball and softball competitions to the Olympic programme, as well as the debuts of karate, skateboarding, surfing, and sport climbing.

S. N.