Commentary by Rick Madge<\/i><\/p>\n
I think it’s now official. The Canadian women are on fire.<\/p>\n
5 Canadian women went under the 1:58.96 Olympic qualifying time for the 200 Free, and while only 2 of them can swim the 200 event, the four fastest qualified their relay for the Olympics. In fact, the 4 women qualified the relay by almost 6 seconds.<\/p>\n
This was a fast and aggressive race. But what’s amazing are the individual stories for each of those five women.<\/p>\n
Brittany Maclean<\/b> of the Etobicoke Swim Club in Toronto continued her incredible return to elite competition after a subpar 2015. She set her second Canadian Record of the meet with a 1:56.94, breaking the now-banned shiny suit record by Genevieve Saumur<\/b> from 2009. On Day 1 she broke the 400 Free Canadian record.<\/p>\n
Brittany swam this race like a veteran. Out in 4th<\/sup> place at the 50, well behind the leaders. And then she grabbed control on the second 50 and never looked back. It was a controlled and very impressive performance by a returning champion, out to let everyone know she’s in charge.<\/p>\n But what’s interesting is that all she would talk about in the post-race scrum was the relay. How incredibly fast it is, and how amazed she is that the 4th<\/sup> fastest time was a low 1:58. She was more excited for the relay than it seemed she was for her own race.<\/p>\n Penny Oleksiak<\/b> of the Toronto Swim Club came into the meet with the 7th<\/sup> fastest 200 Free seed. But I guess when you’re 15 you pretty much plan on big improvements every time you fall into the water. In this 200, Penny was out like a rocket, but had slipped to 4th<\/sup> at the 150. And then threw in the fastest last 50 of the group to capture second with 1:57.59. That’s a drop of over 2.3 seconds! When you add her surprise win in the 100 Fly on Day 1, it’s clear that Penny is the Young Gun story of the meet.<\/p>\n Katerine Savard<\/b> of Club Aquatique Montreal was one of the hard luck stories of the meet. Until this race. Despite being the reigning British Commonwealth 100 Fly champion, and 5th<\/sup> in world in 2015, Katerine was relegated to 3rd<\/sup> place in the insanely fast 100 Fly on Day 1 (won by Penny above). And that was her best race.<\/p>\n But the 200 Free provided Katerine with another chance, and she came through with a huge 1:58.17 and a PB of over a half second. This was good for 3rd<\/sup> and a spot on the relay. I’m positive the crowd was cheering louder for her than any of the other women during the post-race interviews.<\/p>\n Kennedy Goss<\/b> of Granite Gators, Toronto came in to the meet with a PB just over the Olympic Qualifying time, and dropped almost a second to capture the 4th<\/sup> spot with a 1:58.26. Kennedy made her first national team in 2015, but the interesting part is that her father, Sandy Goss<\/b>, was also a Canadian national team member. And he also represented Canada at the Olympics, winning 2 silvers in the 4×100 medley relays in 1984 and 1988, in addition to swimming backstroke AND the 4×200 Free Relays. Like father, like daughter.<\/p>\n And then we have the hard luck story. Taylor Ruck<\/b> of Kelowna, BC is the reigning Junior World Champion in the 200 Free, and qualified first for finals after the heats. But in this incredible final, all she could manage was 5th<\/sup>. Just out of a relay position. But Taylor is also reigning Junior World Champion in the 100 Free, and you just know that the crowd will be with her for that race.<\/p>\n Sports can give us a lot of stories, and sometime you get all of them in the same race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Commentary by Rick Madge I think it’s now official. The Canadian women are on fire. 5 Canadian women went under the 1:58.96 Olympic qualifying time for the 200 Free, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3372,"featured_media":194170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[55746,57349,26903,57403,25045,43440,42883,53577,57404,25053,32614],"class_list":["post-194169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-200-freestyle","tag-2016-canadian-olympic-swimming-trials","tag-brittany-maclean","tag-genevieve-saumur","tag-katerine-savard","tag-kennedy-goss","tag-olympic-trials","tag-penny-oleksiak","tag-sandy-goss","tag-swimming-canada","tag-taylor-ruck"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n