Courtesy: Swimming Canada
SANTIAGO, Chile – A busy day 5 for Canada delivered one silver medal and one bronze medal, while day 6 added another bronze to bring Canada’s total in the pool to nine.
Leading the medal performances on Wednesday (day 5) was Fernando Lu from the Langley Olympians Swim Club who captured bronze in the men’s 100-m butterfly (S10) with a personal best of 1:01.31.
“I think my performances have been pretty good,” said Lu. “I’ve gone several best times”. It’s Lu’s second medal in these Games.
Touching the wall just 0.52 seconds behind Lu in the next lane over was teammate Jagdev Gill from McGill University with his own personal best of 1:01.83.
“He’s able to push me harder whenever I see him slightly pull ahead,” said Gill. “It’s fun racing with a teammate. He pushes me and I think I push him as well”.
Continuing into Thursday, the 6th day of pool competition, Gill added his own medal in the men’s 100-m freestyle (S10). Gill touched the wall in a personal best time (56.90) to give him bronze in the event.
“I’ve been trying to get on the podium the whole week,” said a tired, but happy Gill. “It feels really good to get it on my last individual race”.
Joining in on the medal performances was Tyson MacDonald from the High Performance Centre – Québec who captured a silver medal in the men’s 200-m individual medley (SM14) with a time of 2:16.36. Winning the event was Gabriel Bandeira of Brazil with a Parapan American record time of 2:10.59.
It is MacDonald’s third medal of the Games matching his medal total from his last Parapan American Games in 2019.
“I think that is the second fastest I’ve ever been,” said MacDonald. While not a personal best, MacDonald’s silver medal performance is the fastest he has been in almost ten years.
“I think the biggest thing for me was just to have fun. I struggled a lot during COVID, like so many other people, and just being able to find some fun in swimming and fun in sport again… that’s been the biggest achievement this week”.
Day 5 also showed off Canada’s first relay team of the Games. The 4×100-m mixed medley relay (34 points) team of Myriam Soliman, Fernando Lu, Jagdev Gill, and Alisson Gobeil touched the wall in 5:38.28 and finished 6th overall.
Racing continues until Friday with streaming on the CBC Gem app.
Full results: https://para.results-santiago2023.org/#/discipline/SWM/schedule/daily/2023-11-23