“Our roster for the Pan American Games features a nice mix of veterans and up-and-coming swimmers”, U.S. Swimming national team director Frank Busch told Reuters.
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Canada, which was fifth four years ago in Guadalajara, Mexico, is gunning for the second spot in total medals, a position it has held only once before, in 1967 in Winnipeg.
The mighty Americans have topped the medal table in all but one of the 16 previous Pan Ams, losing to Cuba in 1991 in Havana. Ontarians and visitors from near and far will cheer for their Canadian favourites in a strong show of support for the years of dedication, hard work and sacrifices that Team Canada athletes have made to make our province and the nation proud.
John Conway scored a hat trick for the Canadian men but it wasn’t enough as they lost 11-9 to Brazil in their opener.
A couple hundred athletes from the Canadian team celebrated the raising of the Maple Leaf at the athletes village later Wednesday.
“I’m looking forward to seeing some fast swims in Toronto”.
Two-time Pan Am Games athlete, and seven-time Pan Am Games medalist, Whitney McClintock (Cambridge) and two-time Pan Am Games medalist, Jason McClintock (Cambridge) for water ski and wakeboard.
“To me, the real crucial question one asks oneself before making a decision on bidding for the Olympics again would be how well did the Pan Am Games go?”
The redemption will not be full for the Canadian men’s rugby sevens team at the Pan Am Games, yet a nice consolation prize dangles in front of them. “We shouldn’t be too surprised some tickets haven’t been sold yet, the Games haven’t even started”.
“I think it’s probably a good thing for us to have Argentina in that pool with us”.
Tory acknowledged that traffic jams have been “a little bit worse than I expected”.
“How well did it go overall, how did the city deal with it in terms of transportation, volunteers, interest in the Games, the festival that surrounded it, the legacy infrastructure”.
The next host city, Rio de Janeiro, is sending a delegation to Toronto to pick up tips on setting up its own PrideHouse, organizers said.
Harnett mentioned Canada’s baseball and softball teams, which hope to put the sports back in the spotlight in their request to return to the Olympic program in 2020. They last played in 2008 in Beijing, where they finished 11th. Ontario also assists provincial and local sport organizations to ensure that high performance athletes have the tools they need to succeed at the highest levels of competition, including the TORONTO 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games.
“It’s my home course, it’s where we grew up racing and the way I’m going to treat it is that these other competitors are coming in and I’m gonna defend my home water”, he said.
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There was a heightened police presence Wednesday morning at Union Station, part of the Games’ security $239 million security budget.
