It was a crushing opening night Tuesday in Toronto for Jeremy Bagshaw of Victoria at the Canadian swim trials for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics.
The top two from each event qualify for Rio, as long as they make standard. The first-two finishers in the men鈥檚 200-metre freestyle, Markus Thormeyer of Richmond (1:48.17) and Bagshaw (1:48.20), both fell just shy of the Olympic qualifying standard of 1:47.97.
Had Bagshaw swum the time he did in the 200 metres at the 2015 trials in making the Pan Am Games team, he would have made the team to Rio.
It is that cut-and-dried at the swim trials. There are no second chances. It鈥檚 harsh but it鈥檚 a system Ryan Cochrane of Victoria says is necessary.
鈥淭he Olympics is one chance,鈥� Cochrane rationalized.
Two-time 1,500-metre Olympic medallist Cochrane swam the 200 freestyle Tuesday just as speed work for the 400 freestyle on Thursday and 1,500 metres on Sunday and placed eighth in 1:50.43.
Bagshaw, a SMUS grad and NCAA-medallist at Cal-Berkeley where he majored in engineering, trains at the Cochrane-led Victoria High Performance Centre at Saanich Commonwealth Place. He will get another shot at the Olympic team in the 400-metre freestyle Thursday. Bagshaw was second to Cochrane last year in the 400 metres at the trials for the 2015 Pan Am Games and world championships. If Bagshaw makes the Olympic team in the 400, he could be inserted to also swim the 200 metres at Rio.
The trials were highlighted Tuesday by two Canadian records. Brittany MacLean of Toronto swam 4:03.84 in the women鈥檚 400-metre freestyle to smash her previous national standard of 4:05.06 from the London Olympics in 2012. Penny Oleksiak of Toronto, only 15, had a stunning breakthrough in the women鈥檚 100-metre butterfly in 56.99 to eclipse the previous national record of 57.27 set by Katerine Savard in 2014.
