{"id":508304,"date":"2022-07-07T08:50:18","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T15:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=508304"},"modified":"2022-07-07T08:50:18","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T15:50:18","slug":"canadian-olympic-medalist-kayla-sanchez-switches-to-represent-philippines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/canadian-olympic-medalist-kayla-sanchez-switches-to-represent-philippines\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Olympic Medalist Kayla Sanchez Switches to Represent Philippines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian Olympic Medalist Kayla Sanchez Switches to Represent Philippines<\/strong><\/p>\n

Canadian Olympic medalist Kayla Sanchez<\/strong> is exploring a nationality switch to represent the Philippines, it was announced Thursday.<\/p>\n

Sanchez has been granted her release from Swimming Canada. She was born in Singapore to Filipino parents but was born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario, since she was two years old. She has trained at Swimming Canada\u2019s High Performance Centre in Ontario since after the 2016 Rio Olympics, alongside the core of the nation\u2019s elite program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been really proud of my Filipino heritage,\u201d Sanchez said in a Swimming Canada press release<\/a>. \u201cAside from how much I\u2019ve grown and how good everything has been in Canada, I needed to make this really difficult decision for myself and my family to take this opportunity to represent the Philippines. I want to help inspire people that are like me to swim and get into the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanchez has become a vital relay cog that will be difficult to replace for Canada\u2019s burgeoning program<\/a>. She first represented Canada at the 2017 World Junior Championships, part of three gold-medal winning relays. She has won relay silver at the Commonwealth Games, bronze at the Pan Pacific Championships and gold at the short-course World Championships.<\/p>\n

At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, she led off Canada\u2019s silver-winning 400 free relay in finals<\/a> and swam in prelims with the medley relay that would win bronze. At the recently completed World Championships in Budapest, Sanchez won silver on the women\u2019s 400 free<\/a> and mixed 400 medley relay to go with bronze in the women\u2019s 800 free and 400 medley relays.<\/p>\n

\u201cKayla has been a great team member, centre member and swimmer for Canada and we will miss her,\u201d High Performance Director and National Coach John Atkinson<\/strong> said. \u201cShe brought such a positive energy to our teams, as well as great swimming. Our loss will be the Philippines\u2019 gain, but we support her in this transition as it is the direction she wishes to follow for personal and family reasons. We sincerely wish her nothing but the best in her future swimming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanchez had been slated to represent Canada at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Already, Canada will be without Penny Oleksiak<\/strong> and Taylor Ruck,<\/strong> who pulled out of that meet to focus on rest.<\/p>\n

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A post shared by Kayla Sanchez (@kaylasanchez_)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n