Vikes swimmer among Canada West record breakers
Few Canada West championships in other sports can boast the number of internationals featured in the conference’s swimming championships taking place this weekend at Saanich Commonwealth Place.
The defending Canada West and U Sports national-champion UBC Thunderbirds alone have four 2016 Rio Olympians on their roster with Yuri Kisil, Markus Thormeyer, Erika Seltenreich-Hodgson and bronze-medallist Emily Overholt.
With such an array of talent assembled, it didn’t take long for records to fall.
Kisil and Thormeyer were part of the UBC men’s 4x200 relay team that set the new Canada West record of 7:10.73 in winning gold. Kisil, a 2016 Rio Olympian, won bronze with the Canadian mixed medley relay at the 2017 FINA world aquatics championships over the summer in Budapest, and Thormeyer is a Pan Am Games relay silver medallist. Both will represent Canada at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in April at Gold Coast, Australia.
Ingrid Wilm of UBC also set conference records of 26.88 in the women’s 50-metre butterfly and 27.15 in the 50 backstroke. Kisil added the 50-metre freestyle gold medal Saturday in 21.78 to break his own previous conference record of 22.07.
Among the weekend highlights, Eric Hedlin of the host University of Victoria Vikes broke the conference record in the 1,500 metres by clocking 14:58.05 to eclipse the previous record of 15:04.48 set four years ago by 2012 London Olympian and former UVic Vikes star Alec Page.
Hedlin beat the second-place finisher by more than 20 seconds late Friday in his home pool. The dual citizen from San Diego is also the overall Canadian 1,500-metre champion as he has taken over the national mantle once held for that distance by two-time Olympic-medallist Ryan Cochrane of Victoria.
Hedlin is actually an outdoors specialist, a FINA world championships silver medallist in the open-water 5K, who is targeting the Olympic open-water distance of 10K for the Tokyo 2020.
“You let Eric [Hedlin] be himself,” said Peter Vizsolyi, who has guided several Olympians in his 35 years of coaching the Vikes.
The 25-member Vikes team is up against swimmers from UBC, Alberta, Calgary, Lethbridge, Manitoba, Regina and Thompson Rivers. UVic has a squad of 17 men and eight women, a bit of a change from the recent past when Vikes women’s stars such as Paralympics multi-medallist and Canadian Sports Hall of Fame inductee Stephanie Dixon ruled the UVic pool. “It goes in cycles,” said Vizsolyi. The Canada West championships are a short-course (25-metre) event. The usual for international swimming is 50 metres.
“Those swimmers who are better off the wall will standout more in short course,” noted Vizsolyi.
The Canada West meet concludes today with qualifying from 9 to 11 a.m. and finals from 3 to 5 p.m. The top finishers this weekend will advance to the U Sports swimming championships Feb. 22-24 in Toronto.