Only two days into the tennis and aquatics events at the 2024 Cook Islands Games, Rakahanga is close to achieving a clean sweep at the aquatics, while the pressure is on Mitiaro at the tennis courts after leading on the scoreboard on Monday.

The aquatics started on Saturday at the Vaiana’s in Nikao with sprint races – 50 metres freestyle and 50m backstroke competed across four categories which were all successful, according to the officials.

In tennis, there were a total of 226 entries from all the 11 islands competing at this year’s Games. The tennis events started on Monday with opening matches in the Under-28 and Masters categories.

The others events held yesterday were 3x3 basketball at the National Indoor Arena, darts at Tupapa Centre, rugby league 9s at the National Stadium, oe vaka at Trader Jack’s and squash at the National Indoor Stadium.

Kieran Chan, development director of Cook Islands Aquatics Federation, said the spirit was about developing the sport.

“We saw Rakahangans and heard Rakahanga’s anthem quite a bit (at medal presentations), so that’s an indication that they did win a lot of gold there but all in all, great competitors. The conditions were as best as we can have it,” Chan said.

“Today (yesterday), despite the wind and the slight chop, it was still quite a good race for the 1.5 kilometre, leaving out from Captain Tama’s and Sailing Club, heading out towards the reef, then we cut it back towards Koromiri Island and then straight back to the Sailing Club where we finished up.”

The open water boiler swim was scheduled to be held early this morning as well as the spearfishing exhibition competition.

The aquatics events will conclude tomorrow.

According to Chan, the Cook Island Games is all about development and seeing the up-and-coming younger ones being able to handle the tough conditions and the distance is a great indication that they're on the right track.

Jason Pierre, member of the executive board of the Tennis Cook Islands, explains that they’ve got way more entries than they thought which is really good for tennis.

The finals in the masters category will be held today followed by the Opens games for the rest of the week, featuring singles, doubles, and mixed events.

“We've got really good entries, really good crowd, really good spirit,” Pierre said.

“We’ve got players from overseas coming to play so it’s at a really high level.

“So this year, the favourites are Mitiaro. They've got the top seeds, and they've got a player from New Zealand so I think they've spent the big bucks and are hoping for the good result.

“But there're some players here we don't really know. We don't know their names, we don't know how good they are. It's tough to tell, but the pressure will be on Mitiaro. They've got the number one combination.”