XXX Olympic Games in London – July 27 to August 12-Esparon, Labiche in action this week |06 August 2012

Tomorrow at the Olympic Stadium, Jean-Yves Esparon will line up in the starting blocks of the men’s 200m heats.

As he is surely to rub shoulders with some of the world’s top sprinters, Esparon is expected to use this opportunity to improve his national junior 200m record of 21.75 seconds he set at the 8th African Senior Athletics Championships in Porto-Novo, Benin, in June.

The old national junior 200m record of 21.95 seconds belonged to Christopher Laurence since August 18, 2007.

As for female high jumper Lissa Labiche, she will be in action in the qualifying round of the women’s high jump on Thursday August 9.

The 19-year-old said before leaving for London that a new Seychelles junior and senior record of 1.92m would be her next target after failing to clear 1.91m on July 15 at the IAAF World Junior Athletics Championship in Barcelona, Spain. She finished with 1.88m – the Seychelles record – to clinch the silver medal behind Alessia Trost (1.91m).

Labiche’s silver medal came 16 days after she won the 8th African Senior Athletics Championships high jump gold medal on June 29 in Porto-Novo, Benin, with a bar of 1.86m for a then Seychelles record.

The country’s other four athletes at the Games have all been eliminated at the first hurdle.
Boxer Andrique Allisop lost his lightweight (60kg) bout 8-18 (scores by rounds 3-7, 37- and 2-4) to Indian Jai Bhagwan at the ExCel South arena.

Allisop is one of two local athletes who qualified for the Games. The other is judoka Dominic Dugasse who was ipponed out of the competition by eventual -100kg category bronze medallist Dutchman Henk Grol after just one minute 27 seconds at the ExCel North arena.

Dugasse, the oldest of athlete on the young Seychelles team, carried the country’s colours at the Games’ opening ceremony.

In the 50m pool of the Aquatics Centre, Aurelie Fanchette clocked a personal best time of two minutes 23.49 seconds (2:23.49) in the 200m freestyle preliminaries. Her previous best was 2:26.49

As for Shane Mangroo he clocked 56.46 seconds, which is almost one second slower than his personal best time of 55.90 seconds in the 100m freestyle.

G. G.