Canada is off to a great start at the Pan Am Games
The medals are piling up in Chile
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It didn't take long after the opening ceremony in Chile on Friday night for the hardware to start piling up. Canadians won four gold medals on Saturday, another five Sunday, and three more so far today as gymnast Felix Dolci became the first Canadian in 60 years to capture the men's all-around title while swimmers Maggie Mac Neil and Sydney Pickrem added their own individual golds.
Those victories helped raise the country's medal count to 33 (12 gold, 12 silver, 9 bronze) by our publish time. That put Canada second in the standings, behind the United States, with more podium chances still to come today in swimming and other sports. Read an updated roundup of today's top Canadian results here.
Here are some of the Canadian highlights of the Games so far:
Maggie Mac Neil led a swimming gold rush. After powering the Canadian women's 4x100-metre freestyle relay team to gold on Saturday, the reigning Olympic women's 100m butterfly champion won her signature event Sunday in Pan Am Games-record time. Mac Neil made it a golden hat trick today by taking the women's 100m freestyle before Pickrem won the women's 200m breaststroke. Mary-Sophie Harvey had a double-gold weekend too, winning the women's 200m freestyle and swimming the lead leg in the women's relay victory. Rachel Nicol, in the women's 100m breaststroke, was Canada's other swimming gold medallist over the weekend.
WATCH | Mac Neil races to record time in 100m butterfly at Pan Am Games:
13-year-old skateboarder Fay De Fazio Ebert struck gold. The youngest member of Canada's Pan Am Games team won the women's park event on Sunday. Ebert nearly earned a spot on Canada's Olympic team in 2021 and now seems poised to make the trip to Paris next summer.
Pamela Ware led a big diving medal haul. Ware, who took bronze in the women's 3m springboard at this year's world championships, won gold in the non-Olympic 1m event on Sunday. Mia Vallée took silver to make it a 1-2 finish for Canadians, while Caeli McKay grabbed a bronze in the 10m platform to duplicate her result from this year's worlds. Rylan Wiens and Nathan Zsombor-Murray added a silver in the men's 10m synchronized event.
Canadians swept the mountain biking events. Shortly after Gunnar Holmgren captured gold in the men's competition on Saturday for Canada's first medal of the Games, Jenn Jackson won the women's event. On Sunday, 20-year-old Molly Simpson took silver in the women's BMX event for Canada's third cycling medal of the Games.
Two of taekwondo's Park siblings reached the podium. Skylar Park won gold in the women's 57 kg kyorugi (sparring) event on Sunday while her younger brother Tae-Ku Park took bronze in the men's 68 kg. Braven Park, at 20 years old the youngest of the three siblings competing in Chile, lost his bronze bout in the men's 58kg.
Canada's men's gymnastics team kept rolling. At the world championships in Belgium earlier this month, Dolci, Rene Cournoyer, Zachary Clay, William Emard and Jayson Rampersad helped Canada qualify a men's team for the Olympics for the first time since 2008. On Saturday, they captured Pan Am Games silver, behind the United States. Canada earned bronze in Sunday's women's event, also won by the U.S., before Dolci won the individual men's all-around event today.
Olympic weightlifting champion Maude Charron took silver. A gold medallist two years ago in Tokyo and a two-time Commonwealth Games champ, Charron was the runner-up in the women's 59-kg class on Sunday to Colombia's Yenny Alvarez.
How to watch the Pan Am Games:
Four different channels of live sports are available to stream all day, every day on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem. You can find them here.
Each weekday at 6 p.m. ET on those streaming platforms, CBC Sports' Anastasia Bucsis hosts a show featuring live events and highlights with a focus on Canadian athletes.
The CBC TV network will have additional coverage on Saturday and Sunday afternoons throughout the Games, hosted by Scott Russell and Andi Petrillo.
