Jamaica's Alia Atkinson swims into history

Alia Atkinson made history yesterday by becoming the first Jamaican woman to compete in a final at a FINA World Swimming Championships, finishing sixth in the women's 50 metres breaststroke in Dubai.

Atkinson got off to an impressive start and actually registered the second-fastest reaction time of the field, .66 second, and despite taking and maintaining the lead up to the halfway stage, the Jamaican could not finish strongly enough and clocked 30.25 seconds.

This was .03 second slower than the time she posted in the semi-final. However, Atkinson, the second Carifta swimmer to make a final at these champ-ionships after the Cayman Islands' Shaun Fraser's eighth-place finish in the 200m freestyle on the competition's opening day.

With 15 metres to go, Atkinson was very much poised for a podium spot with all eight swimmers stretched across the pool in a line. With 10m to go, the USA's Rebecca Soni began to work on an advantage and eventually touched the wall first in 29.83 seconds with Australia's Leiston Pickett finishing a close second, just .01 second off the American's time. China's Jin Zhao was third in 29.90. In the end just .51 second separated all swimmers.

Advance to semis

Earlier in the day, Atkinson swam in the 100 metres indi-vidual medley and registered a time of 1:04.64 seconds, a time that was not good enough to grant her a place in the event's semi-finals as it was only gave her 41st place.

Her compatriot, Victoria Ho, who like Atkinson, represented Jamaica at the recent Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, finished 21st after posting 9:15.45 seconds in her 800m freestyle heat.