Canadian blows out knee in bid for wrestling gold

GOLD COAST, Australia — Canadian wrestler Michelle Fazzari had hoped for gold at the Commonwealth Games. She left in a wheelchair with a silver medal around her neck.

The 30-year-old from Hamilton, Ont., positioned her leg awkwardly early in Saturday’s gold-medal match in the 62-kilogram class against defending champion Aminat Adeniyi.

The weight of the attacking Nigerian didn’t help.

Fazzari remained down, pounding the mat in obvious pain. Oblivious, Adeniyi wildly celebrated her gold medal, jumping into her coach’s arms and running around with the Nigerian flag as the Canadian received medical attention to her right knee.

Fazzari, a bronze medallist at the 2017 world championships, had to be helped backstage. She came out to the medal ceremony on crutches with a giant wrapping on the knee. Backstage at the Carrara Sports Arena, a wheelchair awaited.

“It just exploded,” Fazzari said of her knee.

“I don’t know exactly what happened yet and I’ll just wait for our medical team to diagnose it.”

Jessica MacDonald (50 kilograms) and Korey Jarvis (125-plus) also won silver, bringing the wrestling team’s medal count to 10 (two golds, five silver, three bronze).

Canada won 12 medals (7-2-3) four years ago at the games in Glasgow.

“Overall this was not our best performance,” said head coach Tonya Verbeek, a three-time Olympic medallist and silver medal-winner at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

“We had some really great performances and some good wins but we also had some losses there that made us realize we need to be better in certain positions.

“It identifies areas that we need to improve on and this is ideally why we are here,” she added.

Earlier, Erica Wiebe of Ottawa, who trains out of Calgary, defended her 76-kilogram crown and Diana Weicker, a mother of two and part-time pediatrics nurse at a St. Catharines, Ont., hospital, turned heads by winning the 53-kilogram class.

In the pool, Canadian diver Jennifer Abel from Laval, Que., bounced back Saturday from a poor showing in the women’s synchronized three-metre springboard final to win gold in the individual three-metre event.

Also Saturday, Vincent Riendeau of Pointe-Claire, Que., won bronze in the men’s 10-metre platform. He also won bronze in the event in 2010.