The Australians, Americans, and Japanese who dominated the medals table at the 2104 Pan Pac Championships got most of the headlines.
However, as we pointed out after Sunday’s session, this was also a benchmark meet for the other of the four founding members of Pan Pacs: a young Canadian team that is looking to stabilize its talent pool and push them from “young swimmers with great potential” to bona fide Olympic medal contenders.
Two final points to that end came on Sunday, when two Canadian Records were broken: Brittany MacLean in the women’s 1500 free, and Chantal van Landeghem in the women’s 50 free.
Brittany MacLean, 1500 Free, 15:57.15 – MacLean was the CSCAA’s collegiate Swimmer of the Year in the United States last season, and hasn’t slowed down one bit into the long course summer. In the final on Sunday, she improved her personal best time by over 13 seconds, with her old best time being done at the Santa Clara Grand Prix in June.
She also took more than 10 seconds off of Brittany Reimer’s 2005-set National Record of 16:07.73. MacLean now holds the 400, 800, and 1500 meter freestyle National Records in long course, and is creeping ever-closer to the 200 meter record as well – she’s Canada’s version of Katie Ledecky in that regard.
She’ll have one more year at the NCAA level before Ledecky is scheduled to arrive at Stanford in the fall of 2015, but with MacLean’s continued development, she’s the favorite for two more individual NCAA titles, at least, in the spring, for Georgia.
Chantal van Landeghem, 50 free, 24.69 – Van Landeghem is also a Georgia Bulldog during the collegiate season, and this swim broke Victoria Poon’s 2009 Canadian Record of 24.75 that was set at the 2009 World Championships. Her previous was a 24.89 from Worlds last year, so she was already creeping closer-and-closer to this record, and it seemed just a matter of time before she got it.
Van Landeghem was about half-a-second short in Southport of the National Record in the 100 free, where she went a 54.55. Still, that was a half-a-second improvement upon her lifetime best, and that’s going to be a very important event for her to continue developing for the Canadian medley relay, which is shaping up to be a good one.
If she can get under 54 seconds on a flat-start, and closer to 53 on a relay start, then the Canadian medley will have a serious chance at a medal at the 2016 Olympic Games.
Brittany’s 200 free time at Commonwealth Games (1:57.20) is the second fastest in Canadian history. Actually she shares second place with her sister Heather.
Not to be a pest or anything, but there have been multiple posts over the last few days about the women’s 1500 that include the identical text block of current records that continue to show Reimer as the Canadian record holder.