After becoming the first Jamaican woman to swim the 100-metre butterfly in under a minute recently, Alia Atkinson continued to rewrite the history books as she took down the 100-metre freestyle record as well, seemingly for good measure.

Atkinson became the first Jamaican woman to break the 56-second mark when she topped the event on the opening day of the Florida Gold Coast Senior Championships in Coral Springs last Friday.

The four-time Olympian, representing South Florida Aquatics in the women’s 100m freestyle final, displayed her newfound speed at the start and back end of the event when clocking a national record of 55.35 seconds.

Her split of 26.48 for the first 50m was the only one under 26.50 in the field, while her final 50m split of 28.87 was the only sub-29 second time. She won ahead of Kyla Valls (56.33) of Miami Swimming and Victoria Fonville (57.52) of Westminster Academy.

In the 50m breaststroke, Atkinson clocked a season-best 30.54, beating the field by over two seconds and in the process established herself as the eighth fastest woman in the world in the event.

The sensational swimmer is expected to continue her rich vein of form when she seeks more international glory for Jamaica and the region in the first leg of the European cluster of the FINA/Airweave Swimming World Cup Series in Moscow tomorrow.

Meanwhile, young Jamaican sensation Cameron Brown joined Atkinson in action in the 50m breaststroke at the meet and he clocked 31.15 seconds for the silver in the boys’ 13-14 event. The Azura Aquatics representative went close to erasing the 13 year old national record of 31.05 held by Brad Hamilton since 2004.

However, Brown eventually achieved the feat on Sunday in the boys’ 13-14 100m breaststroke, as he lowered the national record now for a fourth time. He clocked 1:09.48 minutes to lower 1:09.66 in the preliminary round, and despite finishing fifth in the final, he still managed to dip below the previous record with a time of 1:09.60.

His previous record breaking exploits came at the Caribbean Islands Swimming Championships (CISC) last year and at the Gulliver Invitational and the SPEEDO sectionals in January and March of this year respectively.

Cameron expressed some measure of disappointment with his execution.

“In my 50-metre breaststroke, I came within 10-hundredths of a second in the 13-14 age-group national record and I was also two seconds shy of the 200-metre breaststroke record of 2:33.55, so I am feeling a little disappointed,” he noted.

“I knew I had an opportunity to touch the record again in my pet event, the 100m breaststroke; my first 50m of 32.05 was the fastest of the field and my turn was good, but I would’ve been happier if my second 50m was faster than 37.43, even though I ended up with a new record,” Brown added.