The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunermedia.net

RIO de Janeiro, Brazil — Dustin Tynes admitted that his Olympic debut in the men’s 100 metre breaststroke was not what he anticipated.

After taking some time to reflect on his performance on Saturday where he was eighth in his heat in one minute and 3.71 seconds to place 44th overall, Tynes admitted that he just simply had a “bad race.”

“It was an incident that I never expected to happen to me,” he told The Tribune. “One thing I always worked on was my start and it was just an unfortunate situation on one of the biggest days of my life. It just wasn’t good.”

Tynes, the 20-year-old student at Ohio State University, said he will go back to the drawing board and just focus on the next games - the FINA World Championships next year - and his next training session and “change some habits maybe, so I can be better prepared for this type of situation.”

Head coach Andy Loveitt said in future analysing what happened to Tynes, he said his reaction time was a lot slower than what it should have been.

“His major problem was once he got into the air, he wasn’t stream lined so when his one hand hit the water, he went into the water, his one hand,” he said. “He didn’t have any momentum, so it was a little bit hard for him to get into the race. That showed up when we reviewed the race. So it was good to get that feedback so he can correct the major mistake that he did.”

Loveitt, who is being assisted in Rio by coach Lionel Moreau, said Tynes definitely came to Rio prepared to swim well, but that mistake cost him big time.

“It was technically a separation of his hand coordination and once you do that and you hit the water, you lose so much energy and it’s hard to make it up against a field of competitors that he faced out there,” he said.

Despite not having the kind of performance he anticipated, touching the wall in his first 50 split in 29.66, Tynes said he will relish in the fact that he got the experience and he can build on it. “I’m going to make sure that if there is a next time, the next time won’t be like this,” he said. “I am disappointed, but I’m prepared to use this as a learning experience and hopefully I will get better as a result of this.”

Bahamas Swimming Federation president Algernon Cargill said he is delighted to see how Tynes has regrouped after his disappointment.

“He’s committed to training hard and getting ready for next year,” Cargill said. “So we expect that he will put this experience behind him and get ready to compete again next year.”

His Olympic debut may not have had the ending that he expected, but Tynes said he will continue to enjoy the rest of the games and will be there supporting his Bahamian team-mates, including swimmers Joanna Evans and Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace, in their respective quest to continue to shatter national records and go after the more loftier prize of winning the medal that has eluded swimming. With the next Olympics in four years in Tokyo, Japan, Tynes said he will do his endeavour best to bounce back and redeem himself.