Na­tion­al sprint­er Jereem "The Dream" Richards and row­er Fe­lice Chow copped sil­ver medals on Fri­day at the Pan Amer­i­can Games, while late Thurs­day night, swim­mer Dy­lan Carter bagged a bronze medal to in­crease T&T's medal count to ten. T&T now has two gold medals (in cy­cling), six sil­ver (in track cy­cling/road cy­cling/ath­let­ics/row­ing) and two bronze (box­ing, swim­ming).

On an­oth­er cold af­ter­noon in Li­ma, Pe­ru, Richards, rac­ing out of lane two, made an im­pres­sive run to place sec­ond in the men's 200 me­tres fi­nal with a time of 20.38 sec­onds.

"It is al­ways good to come out here and rep­re­sent T&T to the best of my abil­i­ty. I Didn't get the gold but I'm pret­ty sat­is­fied with a sil­ver medal be­ing in lane two was very, very dif­fi­cult to try to put my­self in­to the race very ear­ly but I'm very sat­is­fied with the per­for­mance," said Richards with his fa­mil­iar bright smile plas­tered on his face.

"I did what I in­tend­ed to do, I didn't get the win but the ex­e­cu­tion was re­al­ly good for me."

Chow con­tin­ues to wow af­ter plac­ing sec­ond with the time of 7:46.53 in Women's Sin­gles Scull Fi­nal at the Al­bufera Medio Mun­do dur­ing the morn­ing pe­ri­od.

She said, "It feels great to win a Pan Am sil­ver medal for T&T, for my fam­i­ly that trav­elled all the way to cheer.

"It was tough com­pe­ti­tion so that made the podi­um spot so much sweet­er."

IN ATH­LET­ICS

Richards fol­lowed Ecuador's Alex Quinonez to the line, who won gold with a 20.27-tim­ing. Yan­car­los Mar­tinez of Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic was the bronze-medal win­ner in 20.44.

"He is a great com­peti­tor and I was hop­ing to beat him here so it could give me some con­fi­dence go­ing in­to the World Cham­pi­onships be­cause he a 19-sec­ond guy and I wasn't very far off of him to­day (yes­ter­day). I still have faith and con­fi­dence in my­self," said the na­tion­al 200m cham­pi­on.

In the women's ver­sion of the race, Se­moy Hack­ett placed eighth while chal­leng­ing for the gold, crossed in a time of 23.62 in a race won by Ja­maican Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce in 22.43, a new Pan Am record, the pre­vi­ous record was held Amer­i­can Eve­lyn Ash­ford (22.45) in 1979.

Hur­dler Reubin Wal­ters ran a sea­son's best 13.88 sec­onds in the open­ing semi­fi­nal heat of the men's m hur­dles, plac­ing sixth and 11th over­all and did not ad­vance to the fi­nal.

The semi­fi­nals of the men's 4x400 re­lay which were sched­uled for Fri­day were scratched and went straight to the fi­nal card­ed for Sat­ur­day.

In the re­lays, the quar­tet of Ka­maria Du­rant, Michelle-Lee Ahye, Mauri­cia Pri­eto and Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste, run­ning in that or­der, ran a sea­son's best 43.57 and placed fourth in the women's 4x100m fi­nal.

Win­ning gold was Brazil with a sb 43.04, Cana­da won sil­ver with a sb 43.37 and USA, the bronze medal­list, with 43.39.

In the men's 4x100m fi­nal, T&T four­some in the or­der of Jerod El­cock, Ke­ston Bled­man, Akan­ni His­lop and Kyle Greaux, crossed won sil­ver in a sea­son's best 38.46. First was Brazil in 38.27 and third USA in 38.79.

Over on the field, de­fend­ing shot put cham­pi­on Cleopa­tra Borel placed eighth in the fi­nal with her best throw mea­sur­ing 17.37m. The na­tion­al cham­pi­on was the lone T&T ath­lete ad­vanc­ing to the medal round af­ter fin­ish­ing sev­enth af­ter the first round with a best throw of 16.97m.

T&T's oth­er field ath­lete Por­tious War­ren did not progress to com­pete for a medal. Her best ef­fort mea­sured 16.55m to fin­ish in ninth spot.

IN ROW­ING

Chow con­tin­ues to wow af­ter plac­ing sec­ond with the time of 7:46.53 in Women's Sin­gles Scull Fi­nal at the Al­bufera Medio Mun­do.

She shared that the peo­ple around her keep her mo­ti­vat­ed say­ing: "Push­ing and hus­tling, try­ing to find my lim­its, my fam­i­ly, my friends and row­ing part­ners help and en­cour­age me all the way."

Chow has bare­ly fin­ished cel­e­brat­ing and her mind is al­ready on­to her next chal­lenge, tri­als in Rio de Janiero in Brazil for the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

"I will be train­ing to­wards Olympic tri­als and then hope­ful­ly for Tokyo if I'm able to qual­i­fy T&T for row­ing a sec­ond time," said the lo­cal row­er.

IN SWIM­MING

Carter won T&T's sev­enth medal af­ter touch­ing the wall in third place in 54.42 sec­onds in the men's 100m back­stroke fi­nal at the Aquat­ic Cen­tre at the Na­tion­al Sport­ing Vil­lage.

"It was good to get it be­cause I am de­serv­ing of the win, I know I did the work," said Carter on his bronze medal but was still lament­ing over miss­ing out on a medal in the men's 200m back­stroke by .07 sec­onds.

"I'm dis­ap­point­ed with 200m. I think the 200 was a bet­ter swim.

"It was a good feel­ing to at least take some­thing home with me," said an ap­pre­cia­tive Carter, who was back in the pool on Fri­day morn­ing for the heats of the Men's 50m freestyle. Com­pet­ing in heat four he placed fourth in a time of 22.87, the 12th fastest time over­all, qual­i­fy­ing for tonight's B Fi­nal.

The Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) mul­ti­ple gold medal­list and the 2018 World Cham­pi­onships bronze medal­list now joins for­mer na­tion­al swim­ming star George Bovell as a Pan Am Games medal­list.

"It's an ho­n­our, join­ing the leg­endary swim­mer from Trinidad," said Carter "I feel proud to car­ry on the tra­di­tion. I feel some­body has to do it and I refuse to let the sport of swim­ming die in Trinidad so I'm go­ing to keep do­ing it as long as I can rep­re­sent­ing the best that I can to in­spire a younger gen­er­a­tion hope­ful­ly to in­spire some­one to come and fill in what I have left off when my time is up."

On T&T's suc­cess­es thus far in the 18-day event, he said: "The team is do­ing their thing, in cy­cling and on the track and box­ing. I am just hap­py to be able to con­tribute."

Carter plans to take a short break rest be­fore re­sum­ing train­ing next month.

"I'm go­ing to take a week or so rest then we've (pro team) got a lot of rac­ing so I have to get back in­to rac­ing like Sep­tem­ber.

"We have the in­au­gur­al sea­son of the ISL (In­ter­na­tion­al Swim­ming League) so that's like our pro swim league that starts ear­ly Oc­to­ber which I'm lucky enough to be part of. We kick off our first meet which I be­lieve in Dal­las on Oc­to­ber 15 or so. So just start­ing to pre­pare for that and it runs through De­cem­ber.

Be­fore that, though he plans to re­turn home to spend time with his fam­i­ly, a num­ber of them were in Li­ma cheer­ing him on.

"I will be in Trinidad for about a month. Just go­ing to do some work down there train­ing with my dad, lift­ing some weights and stuff," said a smil­ing Carter, hap­py to nab T&T's lone swim medal thus far.

Gabriela Don­ahue was the on­ly oth­er lo­cal swim­mer in ac­tion late Thurs­day, com­pet­ing in the women's 100m back­stroke B Fi­nal and she end­ed in third place with a 1:04.62-clock­ing.

IN ARCHERY

In the men's re­curve in­di­vid­ual 1/16 round, T&T's Daniel Cata­riz was beat­en by Hugo Fran­co of Cu­ba, 7-1.

The com­pe­ti­tion took place at the rug­by field and the lo­cal archer, who set a new na­tion­al record in the open­ing round, start­ed cred­i­bly, shar­ing points from the first set 1-1 (26-26).

How­ev­er, ever as the best in five se­ries pro­gressed, the Cuban out­matched Cata­riz and went on to win the next three sets, 2-0 (29-24, 27-24, 27-26).

On Wednes­day, in the in­di­vid­ual rank­ing (72 ar­rows) round, Cata­riz pro­duced a score of 649 points.

IN SAIL­ING

Olympian An­drew Lewis fin­ished over­all tied for sixth place but dropped to sev­enth af­ter the tie-break­er af­ter the medal race of the men's dinghy open se­ries at Bahia de Para­cas.

On Thurs­day, the na­tion­al sailor reached the fi­nal event af­ter com­plet­ing the 10-race se­ries tied in the sixth spot with Cana­di­an Robert Davis, fol­low­ing his 10th-place fin­ish in races nine and 10.

T&T's oth­er sailor Kel­ly-Ann Ar­rindell af­ter 11th and 12th fin­ish­es in her fi­nal two races re­spec­tive­ly was 12th over­all in the women's dinghy open se­ries and did not qual­i­fy to com­pete for a medal.

IN GOLF

Lo­cal golfer Ys­abelle Lawrence had an­oth­er tough day out on the course at the Li­ma Golf Club but moved up a spot-up in­to 29th fol­low­ing round two in the women's com­pe­ti­tion.

She was 18 over par on a par 71 course and shot 160 over two days.

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