Giani Francis proud of hard work

Despite not winning an individual gold medal at the recent Carifta Swimming Championship, which was held in Barbados, Giani Francis was proud to see her hard work pay off. One of Jamaica’s outstanding performers in the 11-12 age category, she was able to register personal-best times in four of the five individual events that she took part in, to go along with the three individual silver medals that she won at the meet.

“My experience at Carifta this year was awesome. I met new people, and I did some best times, and for that, I am really proud of myself,” she told The Gleaner.

Not surprised

But Francis, who fancies the butterfly and backstroke events, was not surprised she had personal - best times in the 50m butterfly (30.86 seconds), the 50m backstroke (32.68 seconds), the 200m backstroke (1:13.41 minutes) and the 100m butterfly (1:10.17 minutes).

“I was (expecting it) because I worked hard,” she said.

Francis won her only gold medal at the championship in the 4x100m medley in the 11-12 age group, after teaming up with Leanna Wainwright, Kokolo Foster and Christanya Shirley to take the event in a time of 4:49.77 minutes. Her silver medals came in the 50m butterfly, 100m butterfly and 50 backstroke. In the 50m backstroke, she lost out to Bermuda’s Imojen Judd, then in the 50m butterfly she was second to Trinidad’s Joy Blackett. In the 100m butterfly, Aleka Persaud of Guyana got the better of her.

She was also fourth in both the 100m and 200m backstroke, which were both won by Wainwright.

But Francis said she had to overcome the difficulties of performing through the rounds in order to achieve her objectives at the meet. “I had six races,” she said. “I got a gold for my relay and silver for three of my five individual races. I am really proud of myself because for the first few days of Carifta I did back- to-back events, and was it really hard, but my coach gave me a method. After a race, I would jump into the warm-down pool, have a banana, water, then go to the physiotherapist, get myself free, and then go race again.”