SHERBROOKE, Que. (U SPORTS) – The UBC Thunderbirds blew away the competition, making it to the podium in almost every event on the second day of finals at the the 2017 U SPORTS Swimming Championships. They took the lead with more than 500 points per standing, nearly150 points ahead of Montreal in the women’s standings and more than 100 points ahead of Toronto in the men’s.
The UBC men’s team made quite an impression thanks to Coleman Allen’s two gold medals in the 50 and 200m butterfly as well as those won by Markus Thormeyer and Yuri Kisil in the 100m backstroke and 50m freestyle, respectively.
The Montreal Carabins continue to dominate in the women’s standings. The team took the first three places in the 50m butterfly and Katerine Savard beat her compatriot Sandrine Mainville, shattering the previous record with a time of 25.86. Mainville came back strong in the 50m freestyle, this time followed by her sister Arianne, making it a double win for the Carabins and setting a new record of 24.39. Savard won her second medal of the evening in the 400m freestyle, finishing after Danica Ludlow of the Calgary Dinos, and Sophie Marois took home silver in the 200m butterfly.
The queen of the backstroke, Olympic bronze medalist Kylie Masse of the Toronto Varsity Blues, repeated her feat from the day before, beating her own record twice in one day, this time in the 100m with a time of 56.80.
Nick Kostiuk of the Alberta Golden Bears won his second gold medal in the breaststroke, simultaneously dethroning the two-time defending champion in the 200m, Toronto’s Eli Wall, with a time of 2:08.19. On the women’s side, UBC’s Erika Seltenreich-Hodgson came out ahead, winning with a time of 2:22.28.
In a surprising turn of events, Victoria’s Eric Hedlin pulled ahead from the back in the 400m freestyle to steal the gold from the two-time defending champion, UBC’s Keegan Zanatta, by two hundredths of a second with a time of 3:45.07.
The UBC Thunderbirds finished strong, setting two new championship records in the 4x200m freestyle relay. The UBC women’s team went above and beyond with a time of 7:54.86, while the men improved their mark in addition to setting a new Canadian record with a time of 7:08.50.
Tomorrow will be the third and final day of the competition and will include the 100m freestyle, the 50m breaststroke and the 4x100m medley relay. Preliminaries will be held at 10:00 a.m. ET and the finals will take place at 6:00 p.m ET.