Ruck wins eighth medal, ties Games record
Canadian teenage swimmer Taylor Ruck wrapped up a fairy-tale Commonwealth Games on Tuesday with a record-tying eighth medal — a silver in the 4x100 medley relay — then returned to reality at the athletes village.
Making history on the international sports stage apparently doesn’t cut you any slack when it comes to an online English exam scheduled for the day after.
A beaming Ruck, still processing her bumper medal haul of one gold, five silver and two bronze, didn’t seem to mind after a breakthrough sixday competition that saw her win medals in all eight of her events.
“Not in my wildest dreams,” said the 17-year-old from Kelowna, B.C., when asked if she had expected so much hardware.
But Ruck, who won two relay bronze at the Rio Olympics, had served notice she was something special with some eye-popping times since last summer.
“Coming into the competition, I was really excited to see what would come out of it,” she said. “Looking back at all my races and relays, I’m just so happy with how everything was.”
Ruck joins Canadian Ralph Hutton and Australians Susie O’neill and Emily Seebohm as the only athletes to win eight medals at a Commonwealth Games. Hutton accomplished the feat in 1966 at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica, while O’neill did it in Kuala Lumpur in 1988 and Seebohm in 2010 in New Delhi.
Both Canadian entries advanced to the semifinals in beach volleyball.
Sam Pedlow and Sam Schachter defeated Dimitris Apostolou and Georgios Chrysostomou of Cyprus 21-17, 21-15 and will face New Zealand brothers Ben and Sam O’dea on Wednesday.
Melissa Humana-paredes of Toronto and Sarah Pavan of Kitchener, Ont., ranked No. 1 by the FIVB, downed Scotland’s Lynne Beattie and Melissa Coutts 21-9, 21-9 in the late quarterfinal at the Coolangatta Beachfront venue in Gold Coast’s southernmost suburb.
The Canadian women will play Mariota Angelopoulou and Manolina Konstantinou of Cyprus on Wednesday.
Canadian Robert Pitcairn, at 79 the oldest competitor in the history of the Commonwealth Games, finished eighth Tuesday in the Queen’s Prize Pairs shooting finals.
Pitcairn, from Chilliwack, B.C., and teammate Nicole Rossignol of Quebec City had been ninth after the first day of the full-bore shooting competition final Monday.
At 79 years and nine months old, Pitcairn broke the record previously held by England’s Doreen Flanders, who took part in lawn bowls at Glasgow in 2014 a few weeks after her 79th birthday.
Pitcairn, a former member of the Royal Canadian Air Force who retired as a pilot in 1988, stopped a hijacking in 1974 when a passenger on a flight between Winnipeg and Edmonton attacked an air hostess with a knife and demanded he be flown to Cyprus. Pitcairn talked the man out of it.
Pitcairn is also slated to compete in the Queen’s Prize individual event, which starts Wednesday.
Canada defeated England 97-79 Tuesday to earn a berth in the men’s basketball semifinals against New Zealand.
Canada is fielding an all-u Sports men’s team at the tournament.
UBC’S Conor Morgan led the Canadians with 24 points while Ryerson’s Ammanuel Diresssa added 18 and Carleton’s Munis Tutu scored 16.
The Canadian women (2-1-0) have already qualified for the semifinals and will play either England or Jamaica.
Canada was blanked 4-0 by top-ranked Australia in men’s field hockey action.