Narrow miss

Cook Islands sprinter Patricia Taea has narrowly missed out on both a personal best and a spot in the heats of the 100 metres sprint after a brave effort at London’s iconic Mall venue.

Despite a quick start the teenager couldn’t keep up the pace as she finished third with a time of 12.47 seconds, 0.6 seconds behind heat winner Lorene Bazolo.

There were plenty of positives for the Tereora College student, who recorded a season’s best that was just 0.04 seconds slower than her personal best set at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu last year.

Her world-class reaction time of 0.152 seconds was also the second fastest of the 33 sprinters who participated in the preliminaries.

It gave fellow sprinter Patrick Tuara plenty to cheer about as he prepared for his own preliminary race, which was due to take place last night (Friday CIT).

Swimmer Celeste Brown’s Olympic campaign came to an end with a solid swim in the women’s 50 metres freestyle at London’s Aquatics Centre.

Brown registered a time of 29.36 seconds, and finished in seventh position in her heat, some 1.62 seconds behind Malawi swimmer Joyce Tafatatha.

It was a solid-if-not-spectacular for Brown, whose cousin Ella Nicholas competed in the women’s K1 event earlier in this Olympics.

Helema Williams struggled in difficult conditions to finish race seven and race eight in 39th position to consolidate her position at the bottom of the table with two races remaining.

Taea and Brown now turn into spectators and will cheer on fellow Olympians Tuara, weightlifter Luisa Peters and Williams.

The Cook Islands’ final representative – Josh Utanga – gets his campaign underway next week in the K1 1000 metres and K1 200 metres.