Team led by strong performances from Vandal and Casarin
It was in a great atmosphere and high intensity that the 2018 U-Sports National Swimming Championship took place, at the University of Toronto pool.
The Gee-Gees entered the competition after posting strong results in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) finals, led by strong performances by Delphine Vandal, David Casarin, and Montana Champagne, though a large number of Gees performed well. Vandal, Casarin, and Champagne would continue to prove their abilities with impressive performances at the national level.
The National Swimming Championship featured the nation’s best swimmers from coast to coast, including some of the University of Ottawa, reunited in its biggest city to compete for medals in events such as backstroke, butterfly, freestyle, and breaststroke, over last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
The first race on Thursday evening started strong for the University of Calgary, as Danica Ludlow took 1:55 to complete the women’s 200 metre freestyle, scoring 32 points.
The best Gee-Gee in the race, Shelburne, Vermont’s Delphine Vandal, had a 17th place finish, ending with a score of nine and a time of 2:02. The men’s equivalent event was won by Markus Thormeyer of the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds, in a time of 1:43 and a score of 32.
The best Gee-Gee here was Davide Casarin, who swam that distance in 1:45 and scored 27 points, good for a third place finish.
Ottawa’s only first place finish came by the local Montana Champagne in the 200 metre butterfly, in a time of 1:56. Meanwhile, Casarin, an Italian native who has won gold medals in past events, settled for silver in the 400 metre freestyle with a time of 3:46, a race that was won by the U of Calgary’s Peter Brothers, who took two seconds less to finish the race.
The team was able to collect a total of 124 points in the women’s event, for the 13th place amongst other universities, while the men, who finished 11th, were able to collect 186 points. This is still far behind the Thunderbirds who won both the men’s and women’s events, with 749.5 and 974.5 points, respectively.
Moreover, a new Canadian U Sports record was set, when the U of T’s Kylie Masse of took 26.15 seconds to complete the 50 metre backstroke.
For updates on the rest of the events, please visit the Fulcrum’s website.
