DOMINIC Walter, Jamaica’s distance freestyle swimmer, crushed his personal records in the 200- and 400-metre freestyle events at the 2014 SPEEDO Eastern Canadian Championships held in a 25-metre pool from February 13-16.

The 21-year-old showed the results of a gruelling Christmas training camp in Puerto Rico, where his McMaster University completed 12,000 metres-a-day for over 115,000 metres for the entire training stint .He first improved his 200-metre freestyle from 1:54.17 (1:57.37 LCM long course metres) to 1:54.14 (1:57.34 LCM) on Thursday. He achieved this with splits of 27.17 for 50m; 56.14 (28.97) for 100m; and 1:25.45 (29.31) for 150m.

The Wolmer’s graduate would have much more in the tank when he swam the championship finals later. He crushed that time and swam 1:52.93 (1:56.13 LCM). He also improved his placing from 10th to seventh overall.

His times were 26.90 for 50m; 55.40 (28.50) for 100m; and 1:24.12 (28.72) for 150m.

On his last swim of the day he registered the fastest leg for McMaster University when he split 52.13 (53.73 LCM) to help the ‘A’ team to 15th overall in 3:32.49. The event was won by ELITE A in 3:24.37.

On Friday he lowered his preliminaries time from 4:37.76 to 4:33.26 to finish fourth in the B final. In the 400-metre freestyle Walter narrowly missed out on qualifying when he clocked 4:03.60 (4:10.00 LCM) for 11th place, missing out on the Championships Final by a mere .03 of a second and missing his personal best by .40 of a second.

He would not leave anything to chance in the B final on Saturday. At the half-way mark of the race it was three-way contest between Lies Abdelghan Nefsi of Elite (1:59.53), Walter (1:59.56) and Anthony Bluteau (1:59.70).

It was at this point Walter unleashed a race changing split of 28.42 seconds to win in 4:00.75 (4:07.15 LCM). Nefsi tried to hold on to his advantage but could not withstand the change of pace and clocked 4:01.17 (4:07.56LCM) for second with a last 50 of 28.98. Bluteau could not find that gear to keep up and faded with a 30 .41 split to 4:02.85 (4:09.25 LCM).

Walter had the following thoughts on that swim, “In the past I do not usually have an even race pace, but with some key advice from my coaches and a trial in the morning I was able to set myself up for a great finish as well as a new personal best.”

In the 200 butterfly he again was just outside of the qualifying for the championship final, posting 2:08.38 (2:11:18 LCM) with 10th place clocking 2:07.89 (2:10.68 LCM). In the B final when the 5’11” Walter took the 100 metres with a split of 1:00.66 (1:02.05 LCM) the race was over. He attacked the third 50 and split 32.15 to which the field had no answer. He took the race in 2:06.17 9(2; 08.96 LCM).