 Canada is off to a great start at the Pan Am Games | | | 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.
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.
See the full streaming and broadcast schedules here. | | |  | Canadian swimmer Maggie Mac Neil has won three gold medals at the Pan American Games in Chile. (Auro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images) | | | Quickly… | | | Some other things to know:
1. Connor McDavid is out 1-2 weeks with an upper-body injury.
The reigning NHL MVP was hurt during Saturday's 3-2 overtime loss to Winnipeg, which dropped the struggling Edmonton Oilers to 1-3-1 on the season. McDavid, who has eight points in five games after racking up a career-high 153 points last season to win his fifth scoring title, did not play in the last few minutes of the third period or OT. He'll miss this Sunday's outdoor Heritage Classic between the Oilers and Calgary Flames at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium.
In other NHL news, Winnipeg head coach Rick Bowness is taking a leave of absence after his wife, Judy Bowness, suffered a seizure on Sunday.
2. The CFL playoff picture is set.
Calgary's 41-16 thumping of B.C. on Friday night, coupled with Saskatchewan's 29-26 loss to Toronto on Saturday, gave the Stampeders their 18th consecutive post-season berth. B.C.'s defeat also handed the West Division title and a first-round bye to Winnipeg, which beat Edmonton 45-25 on Saturday.
After the regular season wraps up this weekend, the playoff matchups for the following week will be Calgary (6-11) at B.C. (12-6) in the West and Hamilton (8-9) at Montreal (10-7) in the East. Winnipeg (13-4) will host the West final on Nov. 11 while reigning Grey Cup champion Toronto (15-2) hosts the East final.
In other CFL news, eliminated Saskatchewan announced today that head coach Craig Dickenson will not be back while general manager Jeremy O’Day has agreed to a new contract.
In the NFL, banged-up San Francisco star running back Christian McCaffrey is reportedly expected to play tonight vs. Minnesota as the 49ers (5-1) look to match Philadelphia and Super Bowl champion Kansas City (both 6-1) for the league's best record.
3. At least one World Series entry will be decided today.
Defending National League champion Philadelphia can return to the Fall Classic with a win over visiting Arizona in Game 6 of the NL Championships Series at 5:07 p.m. ET. At 8:03 p.m. ET, Texas and Houston will play Game 7 of the ALCS. The reigning World Series champion Astros climbed out of a 2-0 hole in the series with three straight wins before the Rangers forced the rubber match with a 9-2 win last night.
Speaking of the World Series, today is the 30th anniversary of "Touch 'em all, Joe!" | | | And in case you missed it… | | | A few more things from the weekend that you should know about:
Jennifer Jones' team captured their first Grand Slam of Curling title together. The six-time Scotties champ teamed up last season with Karlee Burgess, Emily Zacharias and Lauren Lenentine, who are all at least 24 years younger than Jones, 49. Yesterday, they defeated the team skipped by Kaitlyn Lawes (Jones' former third) to win the women's tournament at the Grand Slam's Tour Challenge event in Niagara Falls, Ont. Jones' 10th career Slam title was her first with her new teammates. Italy's Joel Retornaz beat Canada's Brendan Bottcher in the men's final. Read more about the Tour Challenge here and catch Jones on a new episode of That Curling Show tonight at 7 p.m. ET on the CBC Sports YouTube channel.
Two Canadian duos won silver at the Grand Prix of Figure Skating season opener. Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha (ice dance) and Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud (pairs) were runners-up at Skate America near Dallas. Stephen Gogolev, Canada's only other entry, finished 11th in the men's event, which was won by American sensation Ilia "the Quad God" Malinin for the second straight year. More Canadians, including ice dance standouts Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, are expected to compete at this week's Grand Prix stop in Vancouver. Read more about Skate America and watch highlights here.
Canadian skaters won a pair of gold medals at the short track World Cup opener. With Montreal hosting the first of back-to-back events to begin the season, Canada's women's and men's relay teams were both victorious on Sunday. Three Canadians reached the podium in individual events. Steven Dubois, a triple medallist at the 2022 Olympics, earned silver in the men's 1,000m on Saturday, while on Sunday Felix Roussel took silver in the men's 500m and William Dandjinou got a bronze in the second men's 1,000m race of the weekend.
A teenage surfing star won an international event after her bid for Canadian citizenship failed. Erin Brooks, a 16-year-old who was born in Texas and also grew up in Hawaii, had been allowed to represent Canada while she pursued dual citizenship on the basis of family connections (her American-born father is a dual citizen, and her grandfather was born and raised in Montreal). She won a silver medal for Canada at this year's world championships and was hoping to get a Canadian passport in time to meet the stricter eligibility requirements for the Paris Olympics next summer. But, in June, surfing's world governing body ruled that Brooks could no longer compete for Canada while her citizenship application was pending, and on Friday the Canadian government rejected it. Brooks, who was forced to miss the Pan Am Games in Chile, where an Olympic berth is up for grabs, instead won a pro competition on Saturday in Brazil. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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