The Canadian Press
RIO DI JANIERO, Brazil—Canadian women continued to add to the country’s medal haul last night at the Rio Summer Games.
The women’s 4×200-metre relay team—comprised of rising star Penny Oleksiak of Toronto, Katerine Savard of Pont-Rouge, Que., B.C.-born Taylor Ruck, and Toronto’s Brittany MacLean—took bronze to give Canada its sixth medal of the Games.
The foursome finished the race in seven minutes, 45.39 seconds behind the gold-winning U.S. and silver-winning Australia.
“We knew if we put ourselves in a position before Penny dove in that anything was going to possible,” MacLean said.
“She’s been closing so incredibly.”
It was Canada’s fourth medal in swimming, and the third for the 16-year-old Oleksiak at these Games.
All six of Canada’s medals—one silver, five bronze—have come from female athletes or teams.
Oleksiak had a busy night, also qualifying for the women’s 100 freestyle final with a Canadian record and world junior record time of 52.72 seconds, 0.01 seconds off first-place Cate Campbell of Australia, who set an Olympic record.
The final goes tonight.
“I’m pumped up and ready for tomorrow [Thursday],” Oleksiak said of going for her fourth medal.
“If I can recover properly and everything by [then], I think I’ll be good.”
Canada’s Santo Condorelli wasn’t so lucky last night.
The Kenora, Ont. product narrowly missed the podium in the men’s 100-metre freestyle.
Condorelli touched the wall in a personal best 47.88—0.03 seconds off the third-place finish.
The medal win turned around a blustery day in Rio, where Mother Nature proved to be Canada’s toughest opponent.
Weather again plagued the rowing regatta, forcing a postponement of the entire day of racing.
It marked the second time this week that officials had to call off competition because of high winds and choppy water.
Canada’s men’s four and the women’s eight were among the Canadian boats slated to race along with the team’s best medal hopefuls, Lindsay Jennerich and Patricia Obee, who were to row in the women’s double sculls semi-final.
But the rowers weren’t the only athletes affected by weather as rain and wind resulted in the postponement of tennis.
That means Toronto’s Daniel Nestor and Vancouver’s Vasek Pospisil will have to wait to play their men’s doubles semi-final versus Spain’s Rafael Nadal and Marc Lopez.
Nestor—who won Olympic doubles gold in 2000 with Sebastian Lareau—and Pospisil are the No. 7 seeds.
Nadal and Lopez are seeded sixth.
In other news, the Canadian women’s basketball team improved to 3-0 with a 68-58 win over Senegal.
Toronto’s Crispin Duenas, competing in his third Olympics, advanced to the second round of men’s archery with a 6-5 win over Italian Marco Galiazzo, the ’04 Olympic champion, in a shoot-off.
But Duenas dropped his second-round match 7-3 to American Zach Garrett.
Montreal’s Georcy-Stephanie Thiffeault Picard didn’t advance past the first round of the women’s event.
Hamilton’s Eleanor Harvey upset world No. 1 Arianna Errigo of Italy en route to the women’s foil quarter-finals in fencing.
Harvey then lost 15-13 in the quarter-finals to a Tunisian, but her seventh-place finish is Canada’s best individual result at an Olympic Games.
Kelita Zupancic was eliminated from the women’s 70-kg judo event.
The 26-year-old from Whitby, Ont. lost a heart-breaking repechage match to Austrian Bernadette Graf.
Calgary’s Tara Whitten, a three-time world champion, was seventh in the women’s cycling time trial with a time of 45 minutes, 1.16 seconds.
Meanwhile, Canada’s Josh Binstock and Samuel Schachter fell 2-1 (21-19, 16-21, 15-8) to Austria in men’s beach volleyball preliminary round play last night.
