Team BVI at the 2014 CARIFTA Swimming Championships in Aruba. From left to right: President of the BVI Swimming Federation Elsworth Philip, Secretary General Tracy Bradshaw, Amarah Philip and Elinah Philip
Photo: Provided
The Virgin Islands top swimmers, sisters Amarah and Elinah Phillip will compete at the 12th FINA Swimming World Championships (25m) in Doha, Qatar, which gets underway Wednesday, December 3. Both sisters will swim in the 50m and 100m Freestyle and the 50m and 100m Butterfly.
The World Championships be will take place over five (5) competition days at the Hamad Aquatic Center in Doha, with morning sessions for the heats and evening sessions for the semifinals and finals. The event features the world’s fastest swimmers competing in forty-six events (34 individual and 12 relays).
More than 1,100 athletes from 171 countries are scheduled to compete for the 138 medals up for grabs at the biennial event, which is contested in a 25m pool.
The sisters will share the championship stage with several prominent world swimmers, including César Cielo Filho, the most successful Brazilian swimmer in history.
Further World Record holders set to compete in Doha include Italy’s Federica Pellegrini (200m Butterfly), Agnel Yannick of France (400m Freestyle), South Africa’s Roland Schoeman (50m Freestyle) and Sweden’s Malin Therese Alshammar (50m Butterfly), to name but a few.
The inaugural edition took place in Palma De Mallorca (ESP) in December, 1993, with the participation of 313 swimmers from 43 countries. 15 World Records were broken at these Championships setting a strong tone for the future of the event and the high standards of this unique competition. The event has continued to grow on the world stage to record highs of over 866 swimmers and 158 participating countries in the 11th edition having taken place in Istanbul (TUR) in December, 2012.
Click on the link for start lists: http://www.omegatiming.com/Competition?id=00010E010DFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF&day=1
Sources: BVIPlatinum.com and wscdoha2014.com
