In the zone
Canada eclipses 2011 gold medal count.
It took just five days of competition at the 2015 Pan American Games for Canada to eclipse its gold-medal total from four years ago.
Canadian athletes won six more gold medals in Wednesday’s morning and afternoon events, giving the host nation 31 overall.
Canada won 30 gold medals total over 16 days at the 2011 Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Halifax gymnast Ellie Black and Canada’s rowing team contributed multiple gold medals Wednesday, while Calgary shooter Lynda Kiejko won her second gold of the Games.
Black won gold in the women’s balance-beam competition in the floor exercise, giving her five medals in five events.
Black nailed her balancebeam routine with a score of 15.050 at the highest difficulty level. After her floor exercise routine that got her a score of 14.400, she blew kisses to the crowd at Ricoh Coliseum as fans roared and waved Canadian flags.
Earlier in the Games, the 19year-old won gold in the allaround, bronze in the vault and helped Canada earn silver in the team event.
“This was more than I expected, this has been incredible,’’ Black said. “The support here has been amazing. I was so proud of our team coming in silver, and individually in my finals I was not expecting half of this. So thank you to everyone.’’
Kevin Lytwyn of Stoney Creek, Ont., won silver in the men’s horizontal bar with a score of 15.475 and Victoria Woo of Brossard, Que., won bronze on the women’s balance beam at 13.650.
Canada earned a medal in four of five races, including three gold, on the final day of rowing competition at the Royal Canadian Henley course in St. Catharines, Ont. The men’s lightweight coxless fours, the men’s eight and the women’s quadruple sculls all topped the podium, while Rob Gibson of Kingston, Ont., added a silver in men’s single sculls.
The men’s eights led from start to finish, finishing three seconds ahead of Argentina with a time of six minutes 7.01 seconds.
The eights crew included all four members of the
gold-medal-winning men’s coxless four from earlier in the meet.
“We all agreed there’s no way we could stand on that podium and listen to any other anthem with our fans, family and friends there,’’ said Conlin McCabe of Brockville, Ont. “The whole regatta was going to be a failure to us if we didn’t win the eights, even though we had won the fours and quad already.’’
McCabe, Victoria’s Mike Evans, Will Dean of Kelowna, B.C., Julien Bahain of Sherbrooke, Que., Martin Barakso of Nanaimo, B.C., Tim Schrijver of Thedford, Ont., Kai Langerfeld of Parksville, B.C., Will Crothers of Kingston, and coxswain Jacob Koudys from nearby Fenwick, Ont., got the eights win for Canada.
Kate Goodfellow of Perth, Ont., Kerry Shaffer of nearby Welland, Ont., Carling Zeeman of Cambridge, Ont., and Antje Von Seydlitz of Smithers, B.C., won the quad sculls in 7:07.63, more than eight seconds ahead of the U.S. who won silver in 7:16.26.