TORONTO – Canada picked up two more medals in the pool at the Parapan American Games on Sunday.
Zack McAllister and Zach Zona finished second and third, respectively, in the S8 400-metre freestyle. They will look to add more hardware when they swim in the 50-metre final during the evening session.
McAllister, of Lethbridge, Alta., grabbed the silver in a time of four minutes, 47.88 seconds. Zona, of Waterford, Ont., took bronze in a personal best time of 4:52.36.
Brazil’s Caio Amorim Muniz won the race in 4:33.10.
“I could have gone faster,” said McAllister. “I kind of just knew I was going to get silver so I was playing it safe.”
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Canada’s swimming medal count increased to nine with one gold, five silver and three bronze.
Earlier in the morning, McAllister swam a personal best time of 27.75 seconds and tied for an America’s Record with Mexico’s Armando Andrade in the 50-m free preliminaries. Chris Sergeant-Tsonos, of Kingston, Ont., qualified second with a time of 28.90 while Zona was third with a personal best time of 30.22.
McAllister, who has bone tumours which restrict the growth and range of motion of his arms and legs, said his racing needs some tinkering.
“I started well but kind of died off at the end,” he said. “We will try to fix that. It’s going to be a close race tonight.”
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Sabrina Duchesne of Quebec City, leads four Canadian women into the S7-8 400-m freestyle final.
Duchesne, the youngest on the team at 14, swam a person best time of 5:25.54 to be the fastest in qualifying.
In team sports, Canada played Mexico later Sunday in women’s wheelchair basketball and the Canadian mixed-gender wheelchair rugby team played Colombia.
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