Noah Cumby kept going faster in Fiji and eventually all that speed got him to the podium.
The 18-year-old from St. John’s delivered a blistering freestyle anchor leg to help Canada claim a bronze medal Sunday in the men’s 4x100 medley relay, the final event at the 2018 Pan Pacific Junior swimming championships In Suva, Fiji.
A member of Swim Canada’s national team identification squad, Cumby swam a personal best and Newfoundland and Labrador provincial record of 50.71 seconds in his 100-metre freestyle leg. It represented continued improvement for the Holy Heart graduate and St. John’s Legends product, who had put in a time of 50.78 as part of the Canadian 4x100 freestyle relay team that had ended up short he had delivered a time of 51.47 in the preliminary heat for men’s 100 free.
The latter was good enough to earn Cumby his first international second swim. He had a 51.74 in the 100 free B final, finishing 16th overall.
Cumby swam in three other events at the Fiji meet, which featured competitors from countries in, or bordering on, the Pacific Ocean, which meant swimming powerhouses such as the United States, Australia, China and Japan were well represented.
He was 17th in the 200 freestyle with a time of one minute and 54.94 seconds. Cumby improved on that as part of one of the Canadian entries in the 4x200 freestyle relay competition, posting a best-ever time of 1:53.61.
In the 50-metre freestyle, he was 20th overall with a clocking of 23.87 seconds.
It all represented a solid start to an international career for Cumby, who is part of the development program designed to produce Canadian relay teams for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
It’s also a fine springboard into his endeavours as a varsity collegiate athlete; Cumby now heads in Fort Worth and Texas Christian University, where he will operate on an NCAA athletic scholarship.
