U.S. PARALYMPICS SWIMMING OPEN (2015 CAN-AM OPEN)
- December 10 – 12, 2015
- Bismarck State College Aquatic and Wellness Center
- Bismarck, ND
- Prelims 9:00 AM/Finals 5:00 PM CST
- Event Page
- Psych sheet
- Order of events
- PDF Results
- Live Results on Meet Mobile
Day one at the 2015 Can-Am open saw its biggest performances from Canadian, Chinese, and Russian swimmers but the American team put together strong races in the 100 fly, especially with Roy Perkins Jr’s new 100m fly American Record.
The women’s 200m free was represented by China’s Li Zhang (S5) and Russia’s Ekaterina Kraeva (s14) with their respective times of 3:07.12 and 2:24.84. Two-time U.S. Paralympian Roy Perkins Jr. posted the top time in the S5 class at 2:49.95, just 4.5 seconds off his bronze medal swim at the Glasgow IPC World Championships. Meanwhile in the S14 class, Japan’s Koki Sakakura clocked the event’s fastest race at 2:02.31.
The S8-S10 classes saw the largest concentration of athletes and the fastest swims in the women’s 400m free. Jessica Long finished her race around eleven seconds behind her world record and just slower than her Glasgow prelims time, but she took the S8 class with ease at 4:51.54. China’s Longjuan Dun (S9) and Canada’s Aurelie Rivard (S10) had similar luck dominating their field at 5:09.43 and 4:42.91. The men’s overall of top-time went to Andre Brasil Sr. of Brazil. His finals time of 4:18.14 took the S10 class title from Benoit Huot at 4:22.38. Nicholas-Guy Turbide at 4:32.21 was the next fastest time from the S13 class.
Elizabeth Smith claimed the women’s 100m fly title with 1:10.75, just under second off her own S9 American record. Sixteen year old, Samantha Ryan, shaved time off her S10 prelims seed to post the second fastest 100 fly at 1:11.63 and nipped S13’s Cailin Currie (1:12.84) for second overall. Smith’s LOYO teammate Long swam back-to-back and rocked the S8 class at 1:15.20.
Perkins Jr. lowered his own 100m fly American record as the sole S5 swimmer down to 1:24.52. Brasil Sr. dropped eight seconds off his prelims seed for the fastest men’s 100 fly at 58.86. Robert Griswold earned his second S8 win with this race at 1:05.02 which is just off his 1:04.38 AR.
Olga Poteshkina of Russia’s 35.30 captured the S14 class and the women’s 50m back title. Canadian Nicolas-Guy Turbide jumped to number one in the men’s edition at 28.77 over American Tucker Dupree’s 28.90.
Adult Sungod Swim Club’s relay of Camille Berube, Danielle Kisser, Danielle Dorris, and Ryan beat out McGill/CNHR and China Swimming’s relays for the top spot in the women’s 400m medley relay. The Can-Am Thursday finals concluded with Chris Sergeant Tsonos, Zack McAllister, Zach Zona, and Nathan Stein from the Surrey Knights Swim Club winning the men’s 400m free relay in 4:37.83.
The action resumes tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM CST in Bismarck, ND
I hope the IPC is truly going to clean up their classification process. The classifiers need to be people with a medical background who can fully appreciate neurological disorders, not some swim coaches with an agenda. Canada and Brazil wanted nothing more than for Silverman to be classed out because he was a threat to their S10s, and he is young and still improving. No one wants to watch the fastest class in the Paralympics being owned by a couple of old guys in their 30s who swim about as fast as a pretty good high school swimmer.
I agree para-fan. There is no consistency, no standards, no integrity and no care to improve the situation. Dr Peter van de Vliet at the very least needs to step down in my honest opinion. Let’s not forget we witnessed IM this season and nothing was done about that. How is that possible? The IPC have shown themselves as an absolute disgraceful organisation regarding their handling of ‘witnessing IM’. They most certainly are not serving the majority of their athletes ethically and with integrity. How hard is it to enlist the services of neurologists as a first step? Not that hard unless of course it is blocked by van de Vliet. Credibility has been lost and it is continuing to… Read more »