Halksworth turns fourth into silver

Halksworth turns fourth into silver

Jersey’s Damien Boucheré won the race for his third individual gold of the Games, but Halksworth slashed four seconds off his life-time best to finally get on the podium after a string of fourth places.’I’m over the moon,’ said Halksworth.

‘It’s great to get a medal in the last swim of the week.

It’s just awesome.’I’ve had three fourth places over the week and I’ve been gutted about that.

After that I got so motivated and psyched myself up all afternoon and I felt as if I could swim really quickly.

‘I felt relaxed in the first 100m and I just put everything into it.

When I overtook the guy in second I had to fight to carry on in my position because I thought he was coming back at me.’The last night of swimming finals had already got off to a flying start when Nathan Jégou upset the form book to grab a silver in the 400m freestyle.

A slow pace played into the 17-year-old’s hands and he stayed on the tail of the impressive young Cayman swimmer Shaune Fraser for the whole race.Jégou carved more than five seconds off his heat time to clock 4 min 04.11 sec for his second individual silver of the Games.’I wasn’t expecting it,’ he admitted.

‘After the morning heats there were six guys going 4 min 0 or 4 min 10 and they were going out fairly quick and coming in slow.

‘I can’t go out quick and survive, so I tried to go out slower and come home quicker.

Fortunately for me, apart from the guy who won it, the others went out slow and once we’d pulled away from the field in the third hundred I knew I wasn’t going to be caught.’The men’s 4x100m freestyle squad of Simon Le Couilliard, Nick Hawkshaw, Liam du Feu and Alexis Militis won in 3 min 32.72 sec to break the Games record by almost two seconds in a pulsating head-to-head with the fancied Bermuda.

And the ladies 4x100m medley relay squad mustered up a fantastic performance to win the event but just missed out on the Games record set two years ago in the Isle of Man.

Rosie Barrett (back), Sarah-Jane Poingdestre (breast), Katherine Gamlin (fly) and Natalie Brée (free) finished in 4 min 30.31 sec, less than half a second adrift.Amy Pallot (15) produced an excellent performance from lane one in the 200m butterfly to equal her personal best of 2 min 29.54 sec and finish fourth.Simon Le Couilliard continues to produce the goods despite being in heavy training for the European Youth Olympics later this month.

The 16-year-old took a bronze in the 100m backstroke.Brée could not complain about being beaten to the touch in the 100m freestyle as Guernsey’s Gail Strobridge put in an astonishing performance to liven up the crowd.

Strobridge had barely finished recovering from the 200m butterfly when she swam 58.73 sec to beat Brée’s 59.07.

Brée clocked 30.91 to grab a silver behind Bermuda’s Keira Aitken in the 50m backstroke, in which Rosie Barrett took fourth place in 31.35 sec.

Brée (19) has had a productive Games though, winning six golds despite not being in full-time training.In similar circumstances in terms of form, Alexis Militis pushed Bermudan sprint specialist Roy Birch all the way in the 50m freestyle and finished second in 24.34.

Indeed, Militis’s silver was even more impressive as he swam the whole race with his goggles wrapped round his mouth after they fell down on the dive entry.The final event of the Games saw the spectators go crazy for the 8x50m freestyle relay, and it was a classic Jersey v Guernsey encounter, which Jersey won in a record time of 3 min 29.60 sec.

The triumphant team was Abigail Faudemer, Boucheré, Lauren Le Mière, Le Couilliard, Barrett, Nick Hawkshaw, Brée and Militis.

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