Podium seventh heaven for Lavitt

Maxine Lavitt’s debut at the Western Canadian championships went swimmingly.

The 20-year-old para athlete was one of the stories of the weekend — at a meet headlined by past and future Olympians — after she claimed three gold medals and reached the podium seven times at Pan Am Pool.

Lavitt posted a pair of runner-up finishes (in the 100-metre backstroke and 100m freestyle) and then grabbed golds in the 100m breaststroke and 400m freestyle — all within the first two days. She concluded her first Western Canadian meet with bronze in the 100m butterfly, silver in the 50m freestyle (her choice event) and gold in the 200m individual medley.

“It was a really difficult competition for me, like seven events to race twice — the preliminaries and finals — was really tough. But I tried to make the best out of it,” Lavitt, who is legally blind, said Monday.

She was born with a vision impairment that’s hindered her in the pool since she began swimming at 11. Without her corrective lenses in the water, her vision is “almost like a melted water-colour painting” with no definition of shapes, she said.

Lavitt uses the brightly coloured lane ropes to swim in a straight line and a tapper at each wall tells her when to turn and kick.

“The simplest way I can explain is, there’s a telephone wire going from the back of your brain to your eyes and mine doesn’t relay the messages properly,” she said.

Lavitt swam on the University of Manitoba Bisons’ varsity team for one season but was still restricted from maximizing her potential. She officially transitioned to a para swimmer last May.

“All of my girls that I was racing, and the para boys too, we all have our own community, we were all supporting each other through the whole competition. When we were done, after our last race, we just swam over to each other and gave each other a big hug,” she said.

“It was definitely a gruelling weekend but was a good experience to have and I’m glad that I was surrounded by amazing people who supported me through it.”

Lavitt will now turn her attention to the Paralympic swimming trials in Montreal in May, where she will try to punch her ticket to Paris this summer. She plans to race in all seven events at what will be the biggest meet of her young para career.

“I’m just experimenting with different races and having the chance to be able to race all of them is a good training experience for me,” she said.

Kelsey Wog will also be in Montreal for the Olympic trials. The former Olympian and Bison was a standout at the Western Canadian championship, staying competition-ready as she draws closer to the trials.

Wog, 25, showed she was in a class of her own, winning gold in her only two events.

Wog won the 200m breaststroke with a time of 2:24.17, nearly 12 seconds faster than the next closest swimmer. She followed that up with a time of 1:07.35 in the 100m breaststroke, more than five seconds faster than the next person.

Carson Beggs, currently swimming for the Bisons, took home a pair of silver medals in the men’s 100m and 50m breaststroke events. His university teammate, Rhade Kostelnyk, won bronze in the 100m breaststroke.

Andriy Usan, also on the Bisons’ varsity team, won gold in the men’s 200m butterfly, silver in the 100m and bronze in the 50m fly.

Tam Doan capped a successful meet for Manitoba’s swimmers with bronze in the men’s 50m breaststroke.

joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca

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