Swimming-Shrone Austin grabs fifth gold medal |11 August 2011

Austin, who also won the 200m breaststroke silver medal, clocked 4 minutes 26.59 seconds (4:26.59) to improve her old 400m freestyle record of 4:30.79.

The Seychelles women’s team of Shrone Austin, Shannon Austin, Anish Payet and Aurelie Fanchette (9:30.66), were promoted to second place after Mauritius were disqualified.

Seychelles also won the  men’s 4x200m freestyle relay bronze medal.  The men’s team comprised Steven Mangroo, Shane Mangroo, Bertrand Bristol and Claude Adeline (8:36.87).

The Reunionnais, however, proved their superiority once more by taking five more golds and breaking two records in the process.

The gold medallists were Benoit Debast (men’s 400m freestyle with a new time of 3:57.80, old best was 3:58.82), Géraldine Huffner (women’s 200m breaststroke with 2:38.24, old best was 2:42.32), Florent Hassambay (men’s 100m backstroke with 1:00.95), the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay team (7:56.67) and the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay team (8:45.72)
Mauritius collected two gold medals through Heather Arseth (women’s 100m backstroke with 1:07.63, the old best was 1:08.44) and Darren Chan Chin Wan (men’s 200m breaststroke with 2:29.58).

At the end of the competition, Reunion has finished with 24 gold medals, Mauritius 10 and Seychelles 6.
Among the dignitaries called to present medals to the winners at the close of the swimming championships, was Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Paul Adam, a former IOG swimming champion, who also took part in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

J. L.