Carter swims to double gold at Mare Nostrum first leg

Dylan Carter capped off a successful opening leg of the Mare Nostrum Swim Tour by splashing to double-gold in Canet, France, on Sunday.

After swimming to the men’s 50m freestyle bronze on Saturday, the Trinidad and Tobago athlete showed mettle on the final day by winning the 50m butterfly and 100m freestyle events.

In the 50m fly, Carter touched the wall in a golden 23.36 seconds. He beat to the line current world record holder and eventual silver medallist Hungarian Szebasztian Szabo (23.40s) and one of Sweden’s top swimmers Oskar Hoff (23.49s), who held on to bronze.

In the preliminary rounds, Carter advanced with the third-fastest overall time of 23.73s. Bettering him at this stage were Szabo (23.50s) and Dutchman Nyls Korstanje (23.50s), the top two fastest qualifiers respectively.

Later in the day, the TT Olympian added another gold to his Mare Nostrum first leg tally by clocking 48.94s in the 100m free.

Carter battled valiantly to stave off the likes of eventual second place Kamil Sieradski (48.98s) of Poland and bronze receiver Maxime Grousset (49.16s) of France.

In the earlier qualifier round, Carter was second fastest with his 49.27s clocking. Grousset (49.26s) advanced to the A final with the fastest time while Poland’s Jakub Kraska (49.32s) rounded off the top three fastest qualifiers.

On Saturday, Carter opened his account at the three-leg tour by bagging bronze in the 50m free. There, he touched the wall in 22.25s, finishing behind French winner Florent Manaudou (22.18s) and American silver recipient Michael Andrew (22.22s).

In this event, however, Carter fought his way into this final after he and Norway’s newly-minted national record holder Nicholas Lia both touched in at 22.63s, in the heats.

Their times were ranked eighth fastest and needed a swim-off to decide who would go on to the medal race. In that head-to-head, Carter clocked 22.15s to Lia’s 22.40s to seal a shot in the final, which eventually earned him a podium spot.

The second leg of the tour swims off in Barcelona, Spain on Wednesday and Thursday and the third leg gets underway in Monaco on May 20 and 21.