Victoria’s Island Swimming Club took two of the three spots on the podium in the men’s 200 metre freestyle finals at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre on Wednesday evening.
Jeremy Bagshaw had an early lead that he never gave up as he won the gold with a time of 1:47.48.
His teammate Alec Page finished just behind him in 1:49.20, slightly better than the 1:49.70 finish for Stefan Milosevic of the University of British Columbia Dolphins.
Bagshaw, 22, feels that swimming in the evening benefits him more than in the morning.
“I definitely swim a lot faster at night, there’s a lot more energy,” said Bagshaw, just after receiving his medal on the podium. “This morning I still won my heat … I wanted to go a bit faster this morning than I did but I’m happy with it.”
Despite his good start, Bagshaw made sure to keep his eyes on the prize and not let his attention waver to the other lanes around him.
“You definitely have to focus on your own race,” said Bagshaw. “You can’t look at what other people are doing … if you do that then you get distracted and start focusing on their race plan and you want to do your race plan”
The British Columbia native qualified for the final with a morning preliminary time of 1.49.43 and headed into the finals as the favourite.
With Bagshaw clearly in the lead, the battle for second place was on and Page had a slim lead on Milosevic for most of the race.
Despite his best efforts, Milosevic couldn’t quite catch up to Page and settled for a solid third place finish on the podium.
Milosevic’s UBC teammate Keegan Zanatta also had a good race, unfortunately finishing just shy of the podium with a time of 1:50.64.