SANTIAGO, CHILE: Sloan MacKenzie and Katie Vincent saw their CanoeKayak Canada teammates winning gold Friday and Saturday at the Pan Am Games, so they wanted one of their own.
MacKenzie and Vincent paddled to the gold medal in the C2, 500-metre race.
The Canadians finished ahead of Chile and Colombia in a time of 1:54.26, 17 ticks ahead of the Chilean canoe.
It marked the third medal by local athletes from Fall River/Dartmouth, and the second Cheema Aquatic Club athlete to medal at the Games.
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MacKenzie, of Windsor Junction, spoke to The Laker News shortly after the gold medal win about the race.
“It was a bit windy and bumpy, but we handled the conditions well,” said MacKenzie, adding that with no heat races that meant they didn’t get a “test run” and that made things a different.
In video, you can see the Canadian canoe stop up a bit before the finish line. That was by mistake.
“I did stop early by accident,” said MacKenzie. “I thought the last red buoy was the finish line.”
It didn’t matter as the Canadians had a good enough lead to still get across first.
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She said it was really awesome watching everyone do so well on Friday.
“We wanted to keep the momentum going,” said MacKenzie. “We were happy to add to the pile of gold.”
She said the extra hard work her and Vincent have put it proved to be beneficial.
“I think it shows how much our hard work and training paid of for the last competition of the year,” she said.
So does MacKenzie, Vincent and the other CanoeKayak Canada team members get a bit of a break, come home?
“The team is leaving for California for our first training camp near the end of November,” said MacKenzie. “We’re going to keep training hard over the fall and winter.”
