Ottawa – While many across Canada are feeling the freeze, some of Team Canada’s hopefuls for Paris 2024 are heating up.
Summer McIntosh started off her year with three impressive wins south of the border, while Jessica Guo battled her way onto a fencing World Cup podium in the Olympic city, and a couple of Canadian tennis stars are advancing at the Australian Open. On the winter sports scene, it was a hometown delight for Kaiya Ruiter at the Canadian National Skating Championships in Calgary.
Read on for more on what you might have missed.
Swimming: Three wins for McIntosh at Pro Swim Series
Summer McIntosh swam to three victories in as many days at the Pro Swim Series in Knoxville, Tennessee, her first major long course meet of the year. She opened on Thursday with a dominant victory in the 200m butterfly — in which she is the two-time reigning world champion — winning by nearly three seconds. She posted a similar margin of victory in Friday’s 200m freestyle.
In her final race on Saturday, the 200m individual medley, the 17-year-old was just behind American Alex Walsh at the 150m mark. But with a strong freestyle leg, the Canadian took the win by nearly half a second, setting a Pro Swim Series record time of 2:07.16. She was just 0.07 off the fastest time ever recorded in the event in the United States.
“Overall I’m pretty happy with it. I feel like I got better as the meet went on. Going into this meet I didn’t really have specific expectations on times. I’m always just trying to polish up details and dives and things like that and trying to figure out how I want to swim and execute each race,” said McIntosh.
Among the other notable results, Tessa Cieplucha won the 400m individual medley with her fastest time since the 2022 Canadian Trials. Maggie Mac Neil finished second in the 100m butterfly, racing this early in January for the first time in her career.
Fencing: Guo fights to World Cup bronze in Paris
Jessica Guo earned her second career FIE World Cup medal over the weekend as she took bronze in the women’s foil in Paris. It comes about a month after she earned a bronze in Novi Sad, Serbia. Guo is now ranked 10th in the world.
Starting with the Table of 64, Guo won her way through to the semifinals where she suffered her only loss of the tournament, dropping a decision to the eventual champion, China’s Chen Qingyuan. Guo will be back in action this coming weekend at another World Cup in Zagreb, Croatia.
Ski Jumping: Loutitt finishes just off podium in Sapporo
Alexandria Loutitt missed the podium by one spot in the women’s large hill event at the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup in Sapporo, Japan on Sunday.
In second place after the first round of jumping with a score of 109.9, Loutitt was pushed out of a podium position when she earned just 108.0 for her second jump. Her total of 217.9 left her 0.3 behind Nika Kriznar of Slovenia who took third place. The victory went to Japan’s Yuki Ito who scored 230.1 while German Katharina Schmid finished second with 224.0.
Wrestling: Stewart claims gold at Zagreb Open
The Zagreb Open in Croatia was a tune-up competition for some of the Canadian wrestlers who will be heading to the Pan Am Olympic Qualifier at the end of February. Two Canadian women made it to bronze medal bouts in Olympic program events. Hannah Taylor finished fifth in the 57kg event while Ana Godinez Gonzalez was fifth in the 62kg event.
Source: https://olympic.ca/2024/