In the individual competition, Katherine Uchida of Toronto, ON was sitting in third position heading in to the last rotation – ribbon, but an unfortunate error during her routine dropped her down into fifth position overall. She ended the competition with a total score of 66.200.
“I actually started well today. My clubs was good, and even though I made a small mistake, I managed to get a pretty decent score which kept me in the place I wanted to be, but unfortunately by the time I got to ribbon, it just slipped out of my hand, and I lost,” said Uchida who is the reigning Canadian senior all-around champion. “Considering I was able to hold on as long as I did (to a podium position), I think it’s pretty good to know that I’m a contender to medal tomorrow and the day after. Now I’m just going to forgive and forget and start from scratch.”
Natalie Garcia of Mississauga, ON was the other individual competitor for Canada and she finished just behind Uchida in sixth place with a total score of 63.850: “I’m pretty happy with how I did. Being how I’m a first-year senior, and this is a pretty important competition, and it’s my first Pan Am Games, I think it went pretty good. I had some errors, but I’m hoping to clean them up in the finals.”
Garcia has qualified for the ball, hoop, and clubs finals, while Uchida will compete in all four finals.
Evita Griskenas of the USA took the gold, Camilla Feeley of USA the silver, and Natalia Gaudio of Brazil captured the bronze.
In the group competition, the Canadian senior group composed of Carmel Kallemaa, Vanessa Panov, and Alexandra Udachina of Toronto, Carmen Whelan of Aurora, ON, and Alexandra Zilyuk of Richmond Hill, finished the competition in fifth position with a total score of 40.300. Their performance on Saturday with 3 hoops + 2 clubs garnered them a score of 20.650 which is their highest score to date.
“Today felt really strong, it felt like a solid performance, we may have had a few fumbles here and there, but overall I think it was a strong routine – it was clean, powerful, and we brought the energy to the carpet and I think the score reflected that,” said Whelan who competed at the 2015 Pan American Games as an individual competitor, and joined the group earlier this year.
Her teammate Zilyuk added: “Each competition our routine is just getting better and better with the scores and everything – we achieved our new high score today, and although we have a few little mistakes, we’re working extremely hard to fix them and to get better and to become more consistent.”
The group had to make a last minute substitution when they arrived in Lima as original group member Diana Noskova of Concord, ON had a minor injury and couldn’t compete, so Udachina was flown in to take her place: “I didn’t know I was even going to compete here until about a week ago, but I’m really happy that all things considered, we managed to come together and perform some of the best routines we’ve had so far this season.”
The group will advance to compete in both apparatus finals. Taking the all-around gold today was the team from Mexico. The USA took silver, and Brazil the bronze.
The rhythmic competition continues tomorrow with individual apparatus finals in ball and hoop, and group finals in 5 balls.
The trampoline competition at the 2019 Pan Am Games also kicks off tomorrow with the qualifiers in men’s and women’s individual trampoline.
For full results, please visit: https://www.lima2019.pe/en/results
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