During her first event of her first Commonwealth Games, Evelina Afoa not only beat her qualifying record during her second race of the morning but she won her final heat of the day of which there were two. Evelina, “It felt great coming into the wall and claiming the victory in my heat. I think that I won this race because I was highly motivated which helped me to win this race”. Evelina finished 23rd overall, at the tender age of 15 she is making great strides and improving all the time. Evelina had a really good race just narrowly missing out on her 100m backstroke record by 2/100th of a second.
Evelina also did herself proud during the 50m freestyle. This was her first race of the day. She finished 2nd in this race. Her reaction time was 0.82 seconds and she finished with an eventual time of 29.25 seconds. Evelina, “I think that I can improve for the future by going in with even more of a positive mind set and give it everything that I have”.
Brandon Schuster represented Samoa for the second day at the Games.
The previous day Brandon beat the existing national record for 400m freestyle by 6 seconds. Day 2 saw Brandon competing in the Men’s 200m freestyle where he came into the wall with a time of 2.03.13 and a reaction time of 0.7 seconds off the board. Brandon finished 30th in the overall rankings and second to last in his heat. During this race Brandon also broke the 200m freestyle national record of 2:04.56, setting a new record of 2:03.13. Brandon intends to use the event as a learning experience. “I will train harder and push myself to breaking point, I really enjoyed the fast pace of the race and being up against strong competition, I’m also very proud to have broken my personal best by one second”.
Sat 26th July marked the third day of competition in the swimming at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games for the Samoan swimmers at the Tollcross International Swimming Centre. Brandon Schuster was competing in the men’s 100m freestyle. He finished in a respectable 3rd place out of 8 swimmers. His reaction time off the board was 0.7 seconds. Halfway through the race at the 50m point Brandon had a time of 27.14 seconds, by the time he reached the 100m point he came in with a time of 56.59 seconds. Brandon’s reflected, “The first 50m went well for me, for my future races I want to improve my kick breakout turns, I have the 50m freestyle coming up and for that race I want to have a better stroke and breathing pattern”.
Evelina competed in the Women’s 50m butterfly. “I thought it went well, it wasn’t my personal best but I’m still happy with my swim”. This was Evelina’s reaction to finishing 2nd in her heat in which there were seven swimmers competing, with an overall time of 31.23. She had a reaction time of 0.78 seconds. Evelina, “My short term goals are to do well in my next race and beat my best time, my long term goals are to hopefully represent Samoa at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio”.
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