The first international virtual dual meet between Great Britain’s Loughborough University and Canada’s University of Toronto ended in a tight, three-point meet on the men’s side, with Loughborough taking both wins.
We went over the format and scoring system of the short course meters meet last week, and you can review that story here.
The men’s meet was a cross-Atlantic nailbiter, coming down to just three points and sitting tied with just two events to go. 104-104 after the 50 breast, both programs had only the 400 free and 400 free relay to go. Loughborough’s freestylers, though, sealed the deal with a big 1-2 finish, though Toronto battled back to win the free relay by just .12 seconds (3:21.12 to 3:21.14), making the winning margin just three at the finish.
Jocelyn Ulyett swept the breaststrokes for Loughborough, going 31.69 in the 50, 2:22.74 in the 200 and 1:08.67 in the 100. For Toronto, Kylie Masse won four individual events, supplementing her native backstrokes (26.70 in the 50, 2:04.72 in the 200) with the 100 free (54.05) and 400 free (4:06.93).
On the men’s side, Loughborough triumphed through a sprint sweep by Sam Irvine (22.25 in the 50, 49.50 in the 100). Nathan Wells added a 3:54.55 win in the 400 and a 15:20.24 win in the 1500 to ice a near sprint sweep for the Brits. Toronto’s Eli Wall swept all three breaststrokes (28.24, 1:00.64, 2:12.88).
Toronto swam their events at the Fairweather Division Championships, topping all programs at that meet. Loughborough swam an identical meet lineup during their training time in Britain, though they compressed the two-day meet into one day of racing.
Final team scores:
Men:
- Loughborough 122, Toronto 119
Women:
- Loughborough 133, Toronto 108
Thanks for following this story and reporting throughout. I enjoyed the Canadian content, as well as reading about this meet from the introduction of the idea to the final results.
it would be nice to see some reporting on swimming results from Western Canada too. according to Canada’s SCM swim rankings for this year, nearly all (14/18) of the men’s top times were done in western Canada. Nearly half (7/18) of the women’s top times were done there. (is Oleksiuk not competing yet?)