Nicolas Guy-Turbide is Canada’s latest Para swimming world champion. And Danielle Dorris added some hardware of her own.
The 25-year-old Guy-Turbide, of Quebec City, captured gold in the men’s S13 100-metre backstroke final on Wednesday in Madeira, Portugal.
It took a strong back 50m for the Canadian who took silver at both the 2019 worlds and 2021 Paralympics in the event for the visually impaired, to ultimately climb to the top of the podium.
“Surreal,” Guy-Turbide said in an interview posted to the Canadian Paralympic Committee’s Twitter account. “I came here to race, to give my best as always, and I knew today the one thing that would get me on top was experience so I relied on that heavily.”
“It was probably the toughest race of my life physically. I’ve had lower back problems since the 2019 Worlds,” Guy-Turbide would add later. “I think that once again today, it was my experience that paid off. … To be honest though, I think I have a limited number of races like this left in my body.”
Swimming just one lane over from Guy-Turbide, Dutch swimmer Thomas Van Wanrooij built a steady lead of more than half a second at the turn. But Guy-Turbide accelerated just as Van Wanrooij slowed down, and the Canadian touched first with a time of one minute 0.17 seconds.
Van Wanrooij held on for silver in 1:00.55, while Ukraine’s Oleksii Virchenko took bronze in 1:00.95.
“As a visually impaired swimmer, my race is against myself but at the same time you’re aware of what’s going on around you in the pool and I just knew I had to push a bit harder than anybody else if I really wanted to get on top of the podium,” Guy-Turbide stated.
Guy-Turbide’s triumph marks the fourth gold medal for Canada in Portugal, and the first won by a male swimmer. Shelby Newkirk, Aurélie Rivard and Tess Routliffe previously earned victories.
Dorris, meanwhile, snagged silver in the women’s S7 100m backstroke for her first career medal at worlds.
The Moncton, N.B., native earned the same color medal in the event at her Paralympic debut in Tokyo, where she also broke out with gold in the 50m butterfly and narrowly missed the podium in the 200m individual medley.
Dorris, 19, picked up another silver Wednesday as she touched in a time of 1:23, nearly two full seconds behind gold medalist Julia Gaffney of the U.S who posted a time of 1:21.03.
