Isaiah golden in 200m butterfly

HONIARA, Solomon Islands—Isaiah Aleksenko bagged the CNMI’s second gold medal in the 2023 Pacific Games after winning the 200m butterfly last night at the Aquatics Center.

The 17-year-old Marianas High School student finished the four-tripper around the pool in a blistering time of 2:05.86—also a new CNMI national record—to humble Tahiti’s Nael Roux, with a time of 2:09.52; and New Caledonia’s Baptiste Savignac with a time of 2:11.80.

Coaches and teammates cheered him on during his race and the media also mobbed him for interviews after.

With the 200m butterfly gold, the CNMI now has seven total medals—two gold, a silver, and four bronze.

Aleksenko’s 200m butterfly time in Honiara broke the old standard of 2:25.48 made in 1988 by CNMI Sports Hall of Famer and Pan American Games USA swimmer Jonathan Sakovich.

The evening before, the Saipan Community School alumnus spearheaded the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay team to a bronze-medal finish also at the Aquatic Center.

Not only did they bag a podium finish against strong teams—this is the first team medal for CNMI in the Pacific Games ever—and they also beat the CNMI national record with their time of 8:16.38. The previous record of 8:35.74 was made in Rome in 2009 by Rezne Wong, Kai Staal, Cooper Graf, and Shin Kimura.

Gold went to a stacked New Caledonia team that clocked in under eight minutes at 7:38.62; and silver went to Tahiti with a time of 8:02.27.

Aleksenko gave his team a huge lead as he came in only second to New Caledonia. Kean Pajarillaga tried to keep the second-place pace as Tahiti chased him to no avail and still kept the second-place lead for NMI. Taiyo Akimura, who swam earlier in the 200m individual medley, tried to keep the lead but Tahiti finally caught up as NMI went down to third place.

Finally, anchor Juhn Tenorio swam his hardest to keep the third-place finish despite his 50m backstroke swim earlier in the evening.

Aleksenko said his swim in the first leg was good despite it being “very hot.” He said, “It was hard but I tried to make a good lead so the second swimmer can also have a good lead.” He added that before their race, they already had a goal to break the record, but was surprised to place in the Top 3.

For Pajarillaga who swam the second leg, he said, “I just tried to keep the second-place pace. I was able to keep it for a while and throughout the race I felt pretty good.” The strategy, he said, was that the first 100m was to keep a steady pace, but for the last 100m, speed it up.

Akimura, for his part, said he wasn’t nervous on his turn to swim. “Isaiah and Kean already made a big lead. I just had to keep second or third because I knew the Tahiti swimmers were picking their pace up, so I just had to keep my pace to not lose the medal position.”

In the first 50m, he kept pace with Tahiti, but later, fell back a little due to being tired from his earlier race. However, he was still confident they would place because he knew their anchor, Tenorio, would do his best and swim as fast and as hard as he could.

On how they felt when they realized they beat the NMI record, he said, “at first, I thought it will be a close time, but after, I was really surprised of the big gap between the national record and the time we got.”

Tenorio, who came for the Pacific Games from Japan on Nov. 16, said on how the competition was, “To be honest, we didn’t think we were going to place, so we were just trying to get fourth. And then halfway through in maybe Kean’s leg, a bronze kind of became a possibility. So, from there, we just thought to keep focused and we did it.”

Coach Hiroyuki Kimura was more than surprised at their podium finish and said, “I was beyond moved.”

“For CNMI swimmers, 200m is a hard distance because of no training at a swimming pool. Swimmers need training at 25m or 50m swimming pool and swim long distance every practice for 200m race. Therefore, I didn’t [have] any expectation for 4x200m free relay—not only me but also swimmers themselves were so surprised with this result,” said Kimura.

Coach Richard Sikkel, for his part, said that the race was “super exciting… I am pretty sure this is the first relay medal for swimming in the Pacific Games. The boys swam a great race. They paced themselves well over the 200m and came out with a solid third place finish. Very happy for them.”

Before that, in the preliminaries in the morning, Maria Batallones broke the national record by a mile—which was her own record—in the 50m breaststroke, with a time of 35.09 seconds. Her old record was 36.96 seconds. In the finals, she finished last—also with the exact same time of 35.09.

She said after her race that she felt good because she beat her record by almost a minute. Batallones holds multiple national records and said that her goal in the games is to update all her records.

In other finals events, Akimura finished last in the men’s 200m individual medley with a time of 2:25.58.

Tenorio finished sixth in the 50m backstroke with a time of 27.61; and the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay team of Batallones, Shoko Litulumar, Julia Jinang, and Fraces Raho finished last with a time of 10:08.41.