Canadian breaststroking lady beast, Kierra Smith, won tonight’s 200m race in a time of 2:24.38, just touching out her teammate Martha McCabe for yet another gold medal for the host country. Smith’s finals performance surpassed her earlier Pan American Games record set in the prelims of the event, where she clocked a 2:25.41. McCabe settled for silver tonight by a super slim margin of just .13 of a second, touching the wall in a time of 2:24.38.
The pair of Canadians led the field by almost two seconds and battled to the bitter end. As they touched the 150m wall together and were almost stroke-for-stroke the entire race, it was clear the gold medal would come down to the touch, which fell on Smith’s favor tonight.
Splits for Kierra Smith’s Gold medal-winning Race: 33.04/36.64/37.44/37.26 = 2:24.38
For Smith, the 200m breaststroke win carries some extra vindication, as she was disqualified at Canada’s National Championships this year in her signature event, after initially having won the Canadian title. As a result of the disqualification, ironically, the 200m breaststroke title was then given to McCabe who foreshadowingly finished second to Smith in that race as well.
Smith is slated to swim on Canada’s 4x100m medley relay, which falls on Saturday of these Games.
During prelims Kierra’s right elbow was above the plane of the water surface during the arm recovery. That is illegal in breastroke except for the last pull into the wall. But officials walking the side would be hard-pressed to discern that violation because it was so quick amidst the splashing and they had to watch multiple lanes (plus she didn’t do it every time as the other photo looked like a legal arm recovery).