Success at Provincials
Success at Provincials
We want to tell you of the success that four of our swimmers had this past weekend in Scarborough at the Ontario Swimming Championships. This event featured some of the top swimmers from across the province from more than 100 participating clubs. Over the weekend our athletes: Louis, Logan, and Olivier from Senior White, and Arthur from Senior Red, combined to go best times in 17 of 21 eligible individual swims! This is a fantastic rate for a provincial level competition, where there are over 100 entrants in every event and the pressure is definitely on!
(Left to right: Louis, Logan, Olivier, Arthur)
Louis Lalonde swam three events and went a personal best in two of them, including a 12th place finish in the boys 15-year-old 400 IM event. Arthur Galiano reached the finals in two races, and earned an 8th place finish in the boys 14-and-under 100 Breast, and a 7th place finish in the boys 100 Free, and qualified for summer nationals in the 100 Breast!. Logan Milne earned a bronze medal in the final night in the 200 backstroke in the boys 17-and-over category, especially impressive since he only aged up into this oldest category two weeks before the meet began. Finally, Olivier Risk cemented his place as one of Ontario’s top junior-aged male distance swimmers, with three medals in the three longest freestyle events. Oli captured a bronze (0.01 behind 2nd!) in the 400 free, and silver medals in the 800 and 1500 free, all in personal best times. His 1500 freestyle performance of 15:52.23 LCM puts him currently 5th in the country, and 8 seconds away from Swimming Canada’s World Junior standard!
Left: Logan on the podium for men's 200m backstroke. Right: Olivier on the podium for the men's 400m freestyle.
Coach Nico is also very proud of the boys for their relay contributions, which saw the 4 x 100 Free relay just miss the national Junior relay qualification time by 0.63 seconds! Overall, according to ROCS’ head coach “it was a fantastic weekend where we proved ourselves able to compete with the best from across the province. Considering that for three of our four swimmers it was their first time at this level of championship, the results speak for themselves!”
There are two championships left in our winter-spring peak season: at the end of the month Logan and Olivier will be going back to the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre (TPASC) for Canadian Pool Trials; and in the third week of April, Olivier will be traveling to the Cayman Islands for the Canadian Open Water Trials. We wish them all the best and congratulate all four boys for a hard-fought weekend of great results. ROCS ROCK!
