Christopher Sergeant-Tsonos of Kingston repeated his bronze medal performance in the men’s 50-metre freestyle for S8 swimmers when he finished third in the final of the event Sunday evening at the Parapan American Games in Toronto.
Sergeant-Tsonos was also third in the event at the 2011 Parapan Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.
He was comfortably third in the final in the CIBC Aquatics Centre pool in Scarborough, finishing the race in 28.88 seconds, 1.10 seconds ahead of the fourth-place competitor.
His time in the final was just a hair faster than the second-place time he posted in his heat Sunday morning, 28.90 seconds, which was the third-fastest qualifying time overall.
Canadian Zack McAllister won the gold medal with a time of 27.69 seconds.
Sergeant-Tsonos, a 22-year-old athlete who competes with cebral palsy, was fifth on the opening day of the Games Saturday in the final of the 100-metre backstroke, an event in which he was the silver medalist in 2011. This time, Sergeant-Tsonos finished in 1 minute 19.63 seconds, more than nine seconds behind gold medalist Pipo Carlomango of Argentina.
Also Sunday, Kingston’s Abi Tripp was fourth in the final of the women’s 50-metre freestyle for S8 swimmers.
Tripp finished the race in 33.55 seconds, a second and a half behind bronze medalist Cecelia Jeronimo of Brazil. Tripp, just 14 and entering Grade 9 in September, was second among the four Canadians in the final.
Won by Canadian Morgan Bird at 32.00 seconds, the race was incredibly close. Just five one-hundredths of a second separated the top three competitors.
Tripp’s performance was a good bounce-back effort from a disappointing start Saturday, when she was disqualified from her heat in the 100-metre backstroke.
In the disability classification system, S represents the swimming disciplines of freestyle, backstroke and butterfly. The numeral identifies the level of the athlete’s disability, with one indicating the most severe physical impairment, and 10 being the least impaired. Tripp also competes with cerebral palsy.
Both local competitors will be back in the pool Tuesday, when Sergeant-Tsonos competes in the 100-metre breaststroke, and Tripp, a member of the Kingston Y Penguins, will contest both the women’s 200-metre individual medley and 100-metre breaststroke.