The two golds, two silvers and two bronzes won were the bare facts, pushing Jersey’s swim total to a tremendous 25 – ten more than second-placed Cayman.
This really is a high-quality event, underlined by the breaking of so many Games records and the rapidly growing crowds watching the action at the superb National Sports Center. There was no doubting Jersey’s highlight of the night for Jersey coach Nathan Jégou – the ladies’ 400m freestyle team’s beating the Island and Games records set by a Jersey quartet two years ago in the Isle of Wight. Well, not so much beating it as annihilating it with their time of 3.50.46 – just two-tenths of a second shy of a five-second improvement.
That, as Jégou, pointed out, is an immense achievement, particularly for a quartet containing youngsters making their Games debuts. Beth Cumming (17), Beckie Scaife (14) and Gemma Athlerley (15) were led home by Emily Bashforth despite the huge support urging on an excellent Bermuda team, who took silver after also breaking the previous mark with a time of 3.53.46.
