NATIONAL swimming coach Jackie Walter has described Kevaughn Campbell and Timothy Wynter as tremendous talents while expressing disappointment that none of the girls struck gold at the Carifta Championships held in Kingston recently.

Campbell triumphed in the Boys 11-12 200m breaststroke, 50m breaststroke and 100m breaststroke, and Wynter grabbed gold in the Boys 13-14 50m backstroke and 50m butterfly, while landing a silver medal in the 200m backstroke and 100m backstroke.

“(I’m) very excited about Timothy and Kevaughn… they are both young and we will see how they develop when they really start to train and bodies will change,” said Walter.

“I’m obviously disappointed in the lack of gold in the case of the girls. The main hope of a gold would have been Kendese Nangle as she is on her third meet in a row. With her last meet she made the Youth Olympic qualifying time and was tired,” she added.

Walter noted that for Dominic Walter, the Boys 15-17 1,500m freestyle champion and 400m freestyle silver medallist, he was “quite pleased” and realised that “he has a lot more work to do” and “just realised he broke Andrew Phillips record from 1978 in the 400 free”. He clocked 4:14.76, to erase the previous mark of 4:14.80.

Jamaica ended the four-day meet Tuesday night in fifth place on points and eighth on the medals table.

“In terms of individual performances, the swimmers did well, with most of them achieving personal best times. We have had better all-round performances in terms of medal haul, but based on training facilities for the year and the fact that several swimmers in their club programmes, where 80 per cent of their training is done, did not have a regular training facility, I was quite pleased the result.

“I am not satisfied with the placing. Now that we have the use of the Stadium Pool again, we will be meeting with the next week to formulate what we need to do to improve the level of performance. We will need funding and volunteers to administer a full-scale national programme,” she explained.