Swimming - Golden girl Passon expected back home today |30 July 2019
Passon
Felicity Passon, the darling of Seychelles’ swimming, is expected back home today.
After making Seychelles proud at the just-ended 10th Indian Ocean Islands Games (IOIG) in Mauritius with a record-breaking 11 medals – seven gold, three silver and one bronze – won in the Côte d’Or swimming pool, the Seychelles golden girl flew to Gwanju, South Korea to take part in the 18th Fina World Swimming Championships.
Passon’s gold medals came in the 100m backstroke in 1:03.45 (new Games record), 50m butterfly in 28.06 seconds, 50m freestyle in 26.21 seconds (new Games record), 50m backstroke in 29.47 seconds (new Games record), 100m butterfly in 1:00.69, 200m medley in 2:22.22 (new Games record), and 200 metres backstroke in 2:17.35 (new Games record).
She also won her three silver medals in the 100m freestyle in 56.84 seconds, the 4x100m freestyle relay with teammates Sofie Frichot, Aaliyah Palestrini and Therese Soukup in 4:01.79 and the 4x200m freestyle relay with teammates Aaliyah Palestrini, Khema Elizabeth and Thérèse Soukup in 8:38.33.
Passon won the bronze medal in the 4x100 metres medley relay along with teammates Palestrini, Elizabeth and Soukup with a clocking of 4:38.10.
Another swimmer, Shrone Austin held the previous record of seven gold, one silver and two bronze medals and she achieved the feat at the 7th Games in Madagascar in 2007.
In South Korea, Felicity swam her 200m backstroke race in a new national record time of 2:14.60 to be ranked 30th out of 42 swimmers and her time was almost 3 seconds faster than her performance registered at the IOIG in Mauritius three days prior. Unfortunately for her, she missed the qualifying time to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games by only 0.30 seconds.
Passon also swam her 50m freestyle event in a time of 26.35 seconds (41st out of 100 swimmers).
Her next assignment is expected to be the 12th African Games slated for Rabat and Casablanca, Morocco from August 19-31, 2019.
Morocco was selected to replace Malabo, Equatorial Guinea as the host of the 2019 Games in July 2018.
Previously known as All-Africa Games, the African Games is an important multi-coded event and the highest pinnacle of continental games held every four years – one year before the Olympic Games.
Meanwhile, three other local swimmers took part in the 18th Fina World Swimming Championships in South Korea: Samuele Rossi (50m freestyle in 26.35 seconds to be ranked 41st out of 100 swimmers, and 50m backstroke in 31.67 seconds to be ranked 69th out of 74 swimmers), Simon Bachmann (100m butterfly in 58.06 seconds to be ranked 64th out of 77 swimmers and 400m individual medley in 4:41.42 to be ranked 39th out of 39 swimmers) and Aaliyah Palestrini (50m breaststroke in 40.90 seconds to be ranked 49th out of 56 swimmers and 50m butterfly in 30.18 seconds to be ranked 46th out of 64 swimmers).