Bermuda Olympic Association president Peter Dunne has hailed the island’s Central American and Caribbean Games team after they finished the event with a total of six medals.

Swimmer Emma Harvey led the charge in El Salvador with two individual medals, claiming silver in the 50 metres backstroke and bronze in the 50 butterfly, while there was further success in the pool when Madelyn Moore also won silver in the 50 free.

The island’s cyclists again punched above their weight within the region as Conor White and Caitlin Conyers both picked up bronze medals in the time-trial discipline, while Kaden Hopkins agonisingly missed out on a place on the podium by just one second in the road race.

Capping off the haul was Dage Minors, who put in an assured performance to come away with bronze in the men’s 1,500 metres.

“Winning some medals is always an amazing thing to happen for Bermuda,” said Dunne, president of the Bermuda Olympic Association.

“It’s great also to see medals across different sports. You don’t want to go to these types of events as a one trick pony so to speak and so it was great to see a spread of success.

“Looking at the breadth of what we are doing, it indicates that and it is apparent that we are competitive in what is a very high level of competition.

“To put it into context, you just have to consider something like medals per capita of the competing countries. Effectively we won a medal for every 10,000 people in Bermuda, which is outstanding, especially compared to a country like Mexico, who won the most medals, but is a nation of millions.

“Even smaller countries like Puerto Rico, we still rank way ahead of them in that regard and so I think the team did incredibly well.

“It is a real positive looking forward to events coming up such as the Pan Am Games.”

As well as celebrating the medal triumphs, Dunne was also keen to highlight the significance of the valuable experience of competing at the Games for the Bermuda team as a whole.

Among them athletes like boxer Adrian Roach, who despite suffering a first-round elimination, stayed on in El Salvador and took the opportunity to spar with a number of his top-level rivals, while the men’s sevens rugby team and women’s hockey team will also take encouragement from promising performances at the Games.

“Sport by sport, athlete by athlete I think every one of them will come away with positives that will help them advance in the future, which is what we always hope for,” he added.

“I watched Adrian fight and it’s heartbreaking to think he slugged it out for nine minutes and that’s the end of his time at the Games, but we spoke and he took away a lot, sparring with various different fighters. His takeaway was so much more than just that one fight of three rounds.

“I think that’s the same for the likes of the women’s hockey team and the men’s sevens, who I know both had high expectations, but will learn a lot from that depth of experience which is fantastic.

“People focus on the medals, but it was amazing to see so many of our athletes be so competitive and so close at this level of competition.

“In my opinion we should be looking at more of our athletes having this event more highly on their radar, because by no means is it a low-level event, clearly it’s really competitive and that’s important for progression.

“What I’m hoping is that more athletes will see this as having more value in their development.”

Those sentiments of the greater significance of experiencing the Games was also echoed by Freddie Evans, the Bermuda National Athletics Association president, who reflected on the valuable lessons learned by sprinter Caitlyn Bobb and triple jumper Jah-Nhai Perinchief.

“Caitlyn is coming off the back off an injury and so to get her back in an international event as the youngest in the competition only bodes well for the future,” said Evans, who also hailed the medal-winning exploits of Minors.

“Jah-Nhai is also working through a small injury. He toughed it out throughout and he’ll be working through things he learnt ahead of competing at the Pan Am Games.

“For Dage to get on the podium just speaks volumes about him. Without the injury he had prior to the Games, he arguably could have won. However, he got that bronze, which was awesome to see and we’re just so happy for him.

“All in all it was a very positive event as whole for Bermuda athletics.”