The significance of Owen Daly’s accomplishment over the weekend in Alberta may be best put this way: If this, not 2020, was an Olympic year, the 23-year-old from St. John’s would be going to the Tokyo Summer Games.
As it is, he will be getting a preview of what he could possibly expect two years from now in Japan.
Daly, who trains in Quebec at the CAMO club (Club Aquatique de Montreal), finished just off the podium in two events at the 2018 Canadian Swimming Trials which concluded over the weekend in Edmonton, registering fourth-place finishes in the 100 freestyle and the 100 butterfly. But while he didn’t medal, his performance in the former event gained him a place on Canada’s 4x100 freestyle relay team for the 2018 Pan Pacific championships next month in Tokyo.
Daly will part of what will be a 50-member Canadian PanPac team that also includes para swimmer Katarina Roxon of Stephenville.
The 25-year-old Roxon is in an 18-member group that will compete in the Para Pan Pacifics in Cairns, Australia next month, while Daly and 31 others will swim in Tokyo.
Daly set new personal bests in two events — the 100 and 200 free — in Edmonton.
In the 100, he posted a time of 49.67 in the final, just 12/100ths of a second behind the third-place finisher.
It was the first time the multiple Newfoundland and Labrador record-holder had gone under 50 seconds in the event.
In the 200 free, he concluded a preliminary heat in one minute and 51.95 seconds, good enough to get him into a B final. However, he declined to participate, choosing to rest for events in the meet.
That included the 100 butterfly, where Daly’s 53.83 left him about three/10ths short of a bronze medal. However, it is noteworthy that Daly — who is No. 1-ranked in Canada in the 50m fly — was ahead at the halfway mark in the 100-mtere fly final. Unfortunately for him, there is no 50-metre butterfly competition at these Pan Pacifics, so the event was not included in the Trials schedule. It also won’t be featured at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where the freestyle will be the only stroke raced over 50 metres.
But Daly is a contender in other events, including the 50m freestyle. He was fifth in that event in Edmonton with a time just two/100ths of a second slower than his personal best.
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Roxon and Daly, a former Memorial University swimmer who has been taking courses at Concordia University in Montreal, are participating in a two-day minicamp before heading to their team’s respective staging centres in Australia and Japan. For Day, that venue will be in Wakamaya, which will also be used by the Canadian Olympic swimming team for staging before the Olympics two years from now.
“It’s a rehearsal for Tokyo 2020,” said Swimming Canada national coach John Atkinson.
The Pan Pacific championships will be at Tokyo’s Tatsumi International Swimming Center, which will be an Olympic venue in the 20020, but for water polo. Swimming at the Tokyo Games will be at the Olympics Aquatic Centre, still under construction.
While these will be the first Pan Pacifics for Daly, these will be the third Para Pan Pacifics for Roxon, who competed in events in Edmonton in 2011 and Pasadena, Calif., in 2014. She’s also aiming for her third Paralympic Games, having swum in 2012 in London and 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, where she won a goal medal in the 100m breaststroke.
Roxon won a bronze medal in the 100m breaststroke in Edmonton, but it should be noted that the Trials featured para races with swimmers from multiple grading classes. At Paralympic Games, competition classes are much more specific, based on the grading of swimmers’ disabilities.
Roxon earned two other medal in Edmonton, a silver in the 100m freestyle and bronze in the 200m individual medley relay.
Both the Pan Pacifics in Tokyo and Para PanPacs in Cairns begin Aug. 9.
Notes
Daly and Roxon won’t be the only Newfoundlanders swimming for Canada internationally at a Pacific locale next month. Noah Cumby of the St. John’s Legends had qualified for the Canadian Trials, but instead will be competing in the national junior championship beginning Wednesday in Winnipeg. In late August, Cumby is headed to Fiji with the Canadian team for the junior Pan Pacific championship. Then he’s off to Fort Worth, Texas , where he will begin his freshman season at Texas Christian University and swim for the Horned Frogs varsity program … Two other Newfoundland swimmers participated at the Trials in Edmonton, both in the women’s 1,500m swim. Kate Sullivan of the Mount Pearl Marlins was in the top half of finishers in the event which featured 41 competitors. She finished 19th. Natalie Smart, Sullivan’s Marlins clubmate, was 33rd.
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