Swimmer Jack Harvey won Bermuda’s first medal at the Central American and Caribbean Games on Thursday evening.

Harvey finished a fantastic third in the 50 metres backstroke in Dominican Republic, touching the wall in 25.33sec, 0.5 seconds behind Marcus Reyes, of Mexico, who took the gold medal. Liam Carrington. from Trinidad and Tobago won the silver medal, finishing just 0.22sec in front of Harvey.

It was a fine effort from the Bermudian swimmer, who had been in action just 48 hours earlier at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and arrived in Santo Domingo late on Wednesday night after a tight travel schedule.

After picking up his medal, Harvey spoke exclusively to The Royal Gazette about his joy of making the podium.

“It’s awesome and to get the first podium for Bermuda at the CAC Games makes me excited.

“I’ve got more races tomorrow and the day after so hopefully we can do it again.”

Harvey had entered the final with the second-fastest qualifying time and was still a touch disappointed to finish third.

“It definitely wasn’t my most tidy race,” he said. “Getting a medal is awesomebut going in second and getting third means if I’d had a perfect race I could have maybe got a silver. But I’ll definitely take a bronze and I’ve got more races, so more opportunities.”

Harvey was also expecting to feel more drained after his hours of travel but was surprised to feel relatively fresh.

“I left Glasgow at 3.30am in the morning on Wednesday and then got into DR probably around 9.30pm last night,” he said. “It went well, it went smoothly and I slept most of the flights. I thought I was going to feel a lot worse after a long travel, but I feel all right.”

Elsewhere in the evening finals session Madelyn Moore finished ninth in the women’s 50 metres backstroke final and Elan Daley tenth in the 100 metres butterfly final.

Elijah Daley won the 100 metres butterfly B Final in 54.39sec, a time that would have been good enough for ninth in the A final, but he just missed out on qualification for that by one spot in the morning session.

In the mixed 4x100 metres medley relay final, the team of Elijah and Elan Daley, Madelyn Moore and Sam Williamson finished eighth.