Canada bags 100 medals at Pan Am Games

Canadian swimmer Ryan Cochrane won the gold medal in the men’s 1,500-metre freestyle Saturday at the Pan American Games.

Jasmin Glaesser of Coquitlam, B.C., earned Canada’s other silver medal in the women’s omnium.

After Canada completed the final out, Venezuelan players weren’t happy about how the Canadians were celebrating and tempers briefly flared. Making the moment even more poignant was the fact that Canada’s chef de mission, famous Canadian sprinter Curt Harnett, was in the stands next to the finish line, holding a Canadian flag with pride as he saw Barrette edge Njisane to the line by a hair in the second heat.

Canada could not contain the powerful Brazilian side, ranked sixth in the world, forever and in the 55th minute powerful Fabiana da Silva outmuscled a Canadian defender in the box to get the ball to Andressa Alves who touched it past Canadian goalie Stephanie Labbe.

She came from behind for her win, as the last rider to go into the arena at the OLG Caledon Equestrian Park toppled a pole from the final fence and dropped from first to third.

Brad Ezekiel provided the heroics with a game-winning two-run home run to left-centre in the sixth inning. I think my horse enjoyed it too, it gave him more energy.

As a service to our readers, Around the Rings will provide verbatim texts of selected press releases issued by Olympic-related organizations, federations, businesses and sponsors. “I’m really looking forward to the future and maybe we can duel again and see who comes out on top”.

Canada did have enough offensive chances in the second half to get the crowd going but had trouble getting off a decent shot. American Steven Gluckstein won silver and Colombia’s Angel Hernandez took the bronze. Canada won the rally, moving to within one point of closing out the match. Uruguay had a record of 1-2 in the preliminaries, only scoring three goals. Later, Montreal’s Caroline Veyre will take on Puerto Rico’s Kiria Tapia Rodriguez in a quarter-final in the 57-60 kg category, and Ariane Fortin, who won silver at the 2014 Commonwealth Games for Canada, will take on Francelis Carmona Paez in the 69-75 kg division.

The Canadians knew they were in tough heading into the tournament when they sent what was essentially an Olympic development team with everybody except Labbe under the age of 23, and many of them being only teenagers. Goalie Stephanie Labbe was suspended while Kadeisha Buchanan and Ashley Lawrence, arguably their two best position players, were honouring academic commitments at the University of West Virginia. The other countries had sent mainly their World Cup rosters.

If Canada’s undefeated record is a surprise to anyone, it isn’t to this group of talented women that finished fifth in last year’s world championships.

Heading into Week 2, Canada can expect more medals, especially in track and field – based both on the sheer number of medals available and the strength of the squad.