Ottawa cyclist rides to silver

Rain caused various degrees of havoc for the outdoor sports Wednesday at the Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg, but the gritty female road cyclists soldiered on.

Despite being drenched for the 83.4-kilometre road race, Ottawa’s Katherine Maine, 19, powered her way to the silver medal. Quebec City’s Simone Boilard won by a wheel over Maine.

The top 20 riders were given the same finishing time of two hours, 12.09.0 seconds.

“I’m ecstatic,” Maine said in a telephone interview, after the medal ceremony. “My team (Emily Marcolini of Sudbury, Ruby West of Dundas, Hillary Lowry of Ancaster and Kaitlyn Rauwerda of Hamilton) raced so well. I couldn’t have done it without these girls.

“It was a really hard race. There were a lot of attacks, but that made it more exciting. I owe it (medal performance) to my teammates. They covered all of the moves.”

In the swimming finals, Brandon Lacroix of Natation Gatineau was the silver medallist in the boys’ 50-metre butterfly in 25.67 seconds, while David Quirie of the Nepean-Kanata Barracudas Swim Club won the bronze medal in the boys’ 400-metre freestyle in a personal-best time of 4:08.32.

The canoe and kayak competition for Wednesday was postponed until Friday because the poor weather was causing technical problems.

The rain kept the players off the tennis courts, preventing Malik Bhatnagar of Ottawa from playing his men’s singles quarter-final and his mixed team singles match for Ontario against Alberta.

Ontario won its round-robin pool at 5-0 in boys’ indoor volleyball, defeating Northwest Territories 25-8, 25-7, 25-8, and Newfoundland/Labrador 25-21, 25-19, 25-17.

Quebec is first in its pool at 4-0, following a 25-22, 25-16, 19-25, 25-18 win over Nova Scotia.

In women’s indoor volleyball preliminary action, Ontario remained unbeaten at 4-0, defeating 1-3 Quebec 25-18, 25-20, 25-18.