Claremont secondary student Sarah Darcel made a big splash with three bronze medals at the Canadian World Trials in her home pool last week.
The trials attracted over 400 swimmers to Saanich Commonwealth Place, all qualifying for the Canadian team that will compete at this year’s FINA World Championships, July 14 to 30 in Budapest, Hungary.
Only the top two spots in each race qualify so Darcel was left off the national team, but it was still a huge showing for Darcel. It came just on month after she won silver in the 200-metre individual medley of the Arena Pro Swim Series Circuit in Indianapolis.
However, Darcel, a 2017 grad, will join her Island Swimming/High Performance Centre teammates Jeremy Bagshaw and Danielle Hanus in being named as one of 24 swimmers (10 men, 14 women) representing Canada at the FISU Universiade in Taipei, Aug. 20 to 27.
Saanich-based swimmers who did qualifying for Team Canada to swim in Budapest are Hilary Caldwell, Jeremy Bagshaw, Sydney Pickrem, Mackenzie Padington and open water swimmers Eric Hedlin and Richard Weinberger. They’ll join four-time Olympic medalist Penny Oleksiak, who won gold in the 100m freestyle in Saanich, as well as 2016 Olympic medalists Kayla Sanchez, Chantal Vanlandeghem and Rebeca Smith.
Hedlin grabbed the first gold medal for the men’s 1,500m freestyle in the post-Ryan Cochrane with a time of 15:08.35.
Darcel joined Pickrem (4:35.43) and Mary-Sophie Harvey (4:36.60), in meeting the qualifying time of 4:43.06 in the women’s 400m individual medley. However, Darcel was third in 4:39.29.
Darcel was also third (2:13.51) in the 200m IM behind first-place Pickrem and second-place Erika Seltenreich-Hodgson.
“It’s good to have (Seltenreich-Hodgson and Darcel) in the field. Their strengths are some of my weaknesses. I can usually bounce off that and hopefully it gets me to a good race.” said Pickrem.
Locals Jade Hannah and Faith Knelson qualified to the the FINA World Junior games this summer.
reporter@saanichnews.com
