By Neto Baptiste
The Antigua and Barbuda National Swim Team has been declared overall winners of the 31st OECS Swimming Championships held in St Lucia after being awarded five additional points by the meet coordinators.
It was originally announced that Antigua and Barbuda were joint winners of the championships with Grenada after both teams finished on 1347.50 points at the end of the event last Sunday.
However, since returning home, members of the team’s management staff recognised a critical error where one of the team’s swimmers, Jair Smith, was not awarded the stipulated five points after finishing fourth in the boys’ 18 and over 200 Individual Medley event.
Team Antigua and Barbuda lodged an official protest and following investigations, they were awarded an additional five points to take their tally to 1352.50 points.
Reports are that Smith was moved to a lane that had had been previously scratched after a swimmer from another competing country had pulled out of the race. Despite swimming in the previously scratched lane and finishing fourth, Smith was however, not awarded the five points as the official race line-up showed that the lane was unoccupied.
The development means that Grenada now moves to second on the standings while Antigua and Barbuda are sole champions of the event for a second straight year.
