It’s getting tougher and tougher for Barbadian athletes at the Pan American Games.
Not a single athlete in Aquamarine and Gold has made it to a medal round in Guadalajaa, Mexico, and yesterday two more ambitious youngsters fell by the wayside.
Haydn Lewis and Darian King, this country’s two internationally rated tennis players who ply their trade on the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Futures and Challengers tour, lost in contrasting fashion at the Telcel Tennis Complex.
Playing in men’s singles first-round action, King gave Bajan faithfuls hope with some solid play to win the first set of his match, taking care of Paraguay’s Diego Galeano 7-6 in a tiebreak. But it got much harder after that.
King continued to play well, but was edged 7-5 in the second set, before being broken twice in the third and deciding stanza, losing 6-4.
Lewis, the higher rated of the pair, was much less impressive.
He was broken four times by El Salvador’s Marcelo Arevalo, and was dumped out of the competition 6-4, 6-4.
The best regional player on show yesterday was the one least expected to. Marvin Rolle of The Bahamas got a chance to compete as a wildcard choice, and took the bull by the horns, advancing with a 6-4, 7-5 win over Peru’s Mauricio Echazu.
On Sunday, Trinidad and Tobago’s Roger Daniel grabbed the first medal for the English-speaking Caribbean, collecting silver in the men’s ten-metre air pistol at the Pan Am shooting range.
Daniel, a silver medallist in the discipline at last year’s Commonwealth Games in India, finished with 676.2 points, just behind American Daryl Lee Szarenski, who totalled a Pan Am Games record of 681.7 to take the gold, with Brazil’s Julio Antonio Almeida (675.2) taking bronze.
The top three shooters finished in the same positions in which they had come through the qualifying round.
Barbados’ Calvert Herbert also competed, but did not make it past the preliminary stages. (BA)
