Wynter adds to gold tally

Paul-Andre Walker, Staff Reporter

IONA WYNTER carried Jamaica's gold medal tally to four on Wednesday evening and added to the country's incredible cycling performances so far at the XX Central American and Caribbean Games being held in Cartagena, Colombia.

Wynter, like Oneil Samuels, won the Scratch event after she beat Cuba's Yumari Gonzalez and Venezuela's Karelia Machado.

Wynter also competed in the individual pursuit and while she won her match against Jennifer Prensa of the Dominican Republic, her time wasn't quick enough to get her into last night's final.

OTHER WINNERS

At press time last night, Alia Atkinson was also in the race for yet another medal after she qualified for the final of the 50-metre freestyle event in seventh place in 27.21 seconds. In the men's' 4x100m freestyle relay, the team of Jonathan Wong, Brad Hamilton, Dominic Lee and Travis Forte (3:35.01) qualified for last night's final with the sixth fastest time. The event had not been completed at press time.

Wong also attempted to qualify for last night's 50m backstroke event but ended in 21st place with a time of 30.90 seconds. Only the top eight swimmers make the final.

In squash, Jamaica have ensured themselves of at least a silver medal after the team of Karen Anderson and Marlene Rabess had made their way into the final of the doubles competition against Guatemala. Anderson is coming to the fore as one of Jamaica's top performers in squash at the CAC Games, having already copped a bronze medal in the singles. While the women enjoyed Wednesday, Jamaica's male doubles team crashed out of the competition at the quarter-final stage while the mixed doubles team suffered the same fate. Both teams lost 2-0 to pairs from El Salvador.

SHARP DEFEATS

Jamaica's male shooters also failed to get far as the air pistol, 50-metre prone and 50-metre free pistol teams all went crashing out of the competition in the first round on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, Oberon Pitterson's 17 points were not good enough to stop Jamaica's women's basketball team from falling to their third straight defeat of the competition. This time around Jamaica lost a low scoring 55-41 game to Puerto Rico. Pitterson has been having a good tournament though, having led the team in scoring on at least two occasions.

Meanwhile, a Richard West 45th minute equaliser was not good enough to stop Jamaica from going down 2-1 to Costa Rica in their second game of the tournament.

Costa Rica had earlier scored in the 41st minute through Kenny Cunningham and went ahead in the 87th minute. Jamaica were put in early trouble after Adrian Reid was red carded early in the first half.