A trio of track and field athletes will have a shot at a medal tomorrow, as two more booked their tickets into the final of their respective events at the second Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China.
Tyler Bowe and Jenae Ambrose joined Henri Delauze in the finals, each coming through with third place finishes in the heats of the men and women's 100 meters (m) at the Nanjing Olympic Sports Centre Stadium yesterday.
Bowe ran 10.78 seconds, was third in his heat and has the sixth fastest time overall. He will run out of lane eight in the final set for 9:20 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST), on Saturday.
Ambrose ran a time of 11.84 seconds, was also third in her morning heat, and has the eighth fastest time overall. She will run out of lane two in the final, set for 9 a.m. on Saturday. Delauze's 400m final is set for 10:06 a.m. on Saturday.
Ambrose's time, in particular, was pretty close to her personal best. She ran 11.80 seconds at the CARIFTA Games in Fort-de-France, Martinique this year. Overall, four Caribbean athletes will line up in the final on Saturday, surprisingly none from the sprint capital of the world Jamaica.
As for Ambrose, she was beaten to the tape in her heat by Chinese Xiaojing Liang, who equalled her personal best time in 11.64 seconds, and Sam Geddes, of Australia, who ran a personal best time of 11.69 seconds.
The top qualifier for the final is Ewa Nikola Swoboda, of Poland, who ran a personal best time of 11.30 seconds in qualifying. In his final, Bowe and Raheem Chambers, of Jamaica, will be the only two athletes representing the Caribbean. Chambers has the fastest seed time of 10.27 seconds and will run out of lane five, but was only able to qualify as the fourth fastest, running a time of 10.68 seconds.
The fastest qualifier for the final, Trae Williams, of Australia, won Bowe's heat in a personal best time of 10.51 seconds. Sydney Siame, of Zambia was second in that heat in 10.58 seconds, and is the second fastest qualifier for the final. Bowe was a distant third in that heat in 10.78 seconds.
In swimming yesterday, Dustin Tynes jumped into the pool in the men's 50m breast, but could only muster a time of 29.35 seconds in his preliminary race. He finished seventh in his heat, and 23rd overall, thereby failing to advance to the semi-finals.
In tennis, Rasheed Carey and his mixed doubles partner, Simona Heinova, of the Czech Republic, got into the quarter-finals the easy way as they won by walkover over the South Korean team of Duckhee Lee and Dabin Kim. They will play their quarter-final match today, against the fifth seeded team of Jan Stanislaw Zielinski, of Poland, and Jil Teichmann, of Switzerland. Carey and Heinova are scheduled to play around 7 a.m. today on court two.
As a result of inclement weather, the sailing races in the Byte CII Class - Men's One Person Dinghy were called off. Those races have been re-scheduled to today, and the country's sole sailor, Paul de Souza, is set to get back on the waters at the Jinniu Lake sailing venue for the eighth, ninth and 10th races of the series. The 11th and final race is set for Saturday. De Souza finds himself significantly out of medal contention.
Today in Nanjing (last night in The Bahamas) Laura Morley and Joanna Evans jumped back into the pool in swimming. Morley swam out of lane eight in heat three of the women's 200m breast at 10:14 p.m. Thursday night, and Evans swam out of lane two in heat four of the women's 400m free at 10:37 p.m. The results of those races were unavailable up to press time.
The top eight finishers in the 200m breast and 400m free heats advanced to today's finals, set for 6:24 a.m. and 7:02 a.m. respectively.
Also today, Dreshanae Rolle will compete in the heats of the women's 400m hurdles in athletics. Rolle will run out of lane five in heat two at 7:01 a.m. The top eight athletes advance to the final, set for Monday at 7:20 a.m.
Overall, about 3,800 athletes between the ages of 14 and 18 years, from 204 countries, are competing in 28 sporting disciplines in Nanjing.
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