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Newsletter by Keiran Gorsky, Tyler Reis-Sanford, Martin Cleary, Dan Plouffe, Farrah Philpot & Keaton Hills
Canoe-kayak events came to a close on Thursday at the 2025 Canada Summer Games, and with them, nearly a quarter of Ottawa’s contingent competing in St. John’s will soon be headed home – 37 medals in tow.
The team of 11 local paddlers wasn’t about to leave Quidi Vidi Lake without one final splash.
The all-Rideau/Carleton Place Canoe Club lineup of Isabel Lowry, Madeleine Beauregard, Abigail Haines and Julia Price fought Team Quebec to an unlikely tie in the women’s IC-4 200 m, sharing the gold with matching times of 43.719 seconds. It was the first time Haines had ever tied a race.
“We thought we got second. Izzy was screaming ‘Go, go, go!’” Haines recapped the photo finish.
They had to make slight adjustments to account for a persistent sidewind from the left. Right steerers, like Beauregard, were stuck with the unenviable task of correcting course so as not to clip adjacent lanes. The quartet brushed a little closer than they would have liked to the red-white buoys separating boat from boat.
“It was a bit tricky but we managed to stay in,” Haines described.
Rideau’s Fred Brais collected a fourth medal, winning the men’s K-2 200 metres with a time of 37.654 seconds, a whisker ahead of Manitoba’s Luke Enns.
He proceeded to make a fifth trip to the podium, sharing the top step with Rideau Canoe Club boatmate Ryan Naroditsky in the K-4 200 m alongside Team Ontario mates Owen MacLean and Carson Corey.
Naroditsky and Brais will each depart Newfoundland with five sparkling gold medals apiece.
With her bronze medal in the K-2 200 m alongside Maea Knights, Rideau’s Kate Osborne will leave as the most decorated local athlete of the Games, having won six in total – one gold, three silver and two bronze.
Beauregard put in a big effort to earn her fifth medal of the Games, scoring her third silver with her 34:07.278 performance in the long-distance C-1 5,000 m to go alongside two gold.
Ruby Muhl, another of Rideau Canoe’s eight representatives, earned silver in the women’s C1 200 m to bring her medal haul to four. It’s been a rather cumbersome workload for the now 19-year-old, who hasn’t seen a great deal of practice time between the Canada Games and the recent under-23 world championships in Portugal where she recorded four top-10 finishes.
“It’s just been competition after competition,” noted Muhl, who also captured gold on Tuesday in the IC-4 women’s 500 m. “Once you lose the rhythm of doing sprints every day, it’s hard to get it back in a few days.”
The team is happy to get a breather in their three remaining days in St. John’s, reserved in advance in case of weather delay. They’re hoping to cheer on their Ontario teammates in other sports and hit the beach if time permits.
In the days since the Ottawa Sports Pages last visited the banks of Quidi Vidi, it seems shiny metallic pins have supplanted regular old clothespins as the hottest commodities. Athletes, volunteers, children and large children alike are engaged in tactical negotiations to amass as many as possible.
The most sought after, Muhl indicated, requires participants to collect and redeem 100 of the little plastic bags the pins are sealed in.
“The most rare one is this whale that can open its mouth and it has a family inside,” a suspiciously knowledgeable Muhl explained, before clarifying she is definitely not interested in vying for one.
Rest assured, the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Keiran Gorsky has most of two weeks left to confirm the claim and collect his century. He’s well on his way, with a grand total of…
…One. Hm.
Deniz Capraz heads to open water for final swim of Canada Games
Ottawa’s Deniz Capraz and Jordyn Richardson swam their final laps at The Works Aquarena on Thursday evening. Perhaps his flagship event, Capraz was a little disappointed to finish the 1500 m freestyle in 16:44.19 for fifth place, some 25 seconds slower than his personal best. He was well in the fight for his second bronze medal before drifting to the middle of the pack towards the end of the race.
“For distance events, it’s really about channelling that energy and making sure you’re focused and pushing all through the race,” Capraz underlined. “It does get kind of hard mentally training for all of this.”
Originally from Burlington, Capraz moved to Ottawa at the beginning of Grade 10 where he competed as a member of the Nepean Kanata Barracudas. The 1,500 m freestyle runner-up at the recent Ontario Championships, he will be attending St. Francis Xavier University in the coming school year.
Capraz is looking forward to capping off his Canada Games tomorrow morning with the 3000 m open water race in scenic Rotary Park. He’s also intent on collecting as many pins as possible before time runs out.
“It’s like the unofficial sport,” laughed Capraz, who won a relay bronze medal earlier in the Games. “I want to have something to look back on when I do leave the Games.”
Richardson, who won a bronze in her signature 50 m freestyle earlier, finished Thursday’s 100 m free in sixth place and the 50 m butterfly in 22nd.
Ottawa’s youngest athlete of the Canada Games then went on to win her fourth medal of the meet as a member of Ontario’s mixed 4×100 m free relay team.
The 13-year-old Ottawa Youth Olympians swimmer politely declined the Ottawa Sports Pages’ request for an interview.
Rugby rewards, tennis thrashing, basketball sails on, sailing back on
Following their silver medal finish in women’s rugby sevens, Ottawa’s Grace Dingwall was named Ontario’s player of the tournament. The speedy back from the Barrhaven Scottish scored seven tries in seven matches.
Finishing atop their group in tennis, Team Ontario squared off against P.E.I. in their quarterfinal matchup this morning. Partnering with Benjamin Azar in men’s doubles, Josh Adamson blanked Sebastian Nguyen and Elijah Opps 6-0, 6-0 as Ontario dropped only two games through six matches to progress to the semis Friday afternoon against B.C., who they beat 5-1 in their preliminary round series.
“I’m very impressed with [Joshua’s] work ethic,” Coach Mahal told the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Tyler Reis-Sanford on Wednesday in a phone interview. “His attitude on the court is amazing. He’s got a great skillset and he’s a very hardworking, team-oriented player.
In men’s basketball, Godson Okokoh and Emmanuel Oko-Oboh helped Ontario to a commanding 105-62 win over New Brunswick in the quarterfinals. Oko-Oboh scored seven points, while Okokoh dropped a team-high 16. They will play B.C. in the semi-final on Friday night. Daniella Appoh and Team Quebec are out of women’s basketball medal contention after their 69-59 defeat to Nova Scotia.
In men’s soccer, Reinaldo Abraham scored his first goal of the Games in the 76th minute of Ontario’s 4-1 rout of P.E.I in the qualification phase for the 5th/6th place match. They will play New Brunswick on Friday afternoon in their final action in Newfoundland.
Evania Lovshin and Brodie Sorensen of the Britannia Yacht Club returned to the waters as the sailing competition resumed following a wildfire-induced hiatus. They raced three times in a single day to try to make up lost time. Sorensen placed second four times and third once, leaving him in second place in the men’s single-handed ILCA overall standings with 16 points – one behind Nova Scotia’s Sullivan Nakatsu. Meanwhile, Lovshin’s seesaw results continued. The Team Quebec athlete has either won or been disqualified from all of her races, leaving her in sixth place overall with 33 points. The BYC athletes are scheduled to be back on Conception Bay Friday and Saturday.
Day 7 Preview: Kyleigh Payne chases 2nd box lacrosse tournament medal in 2 weeks
In women’s lacrosse Thursday, goaltender Kyleigh Payne returned between the posts and made 32 saves for Ontario, but it wasn’t enough to make it to the championship final as Alberta stormed back from a 3-0 deficit to win 4-3.
It may not be the colour she most preferred, but Payne will have a chance to capture her second medal in as many weeks when her team plays in Friday afternoon’s bronze medal match against Nova Scotia, who they beat 9-2 in the preliminary round.
The 16-year-old arrived in Newfoundland fresh off winning a provincial ‘B’ championship with her Nepean Knights club team at the Ontario Lacrosse Festival from Aug. 5-7 in Whitby.
The Knights opened with a 3-2 victory over Orangeville and then beat Wallaceburg 5-0, Barrie 4-1 and Six Nations 5-0 to reach the championship game, where they again topped Orangeville 3-2.
Payne stood tall as she and her teammates endured some nervous final moments when Orangeville pulled within a goal of tying the game with 2:18 left.
Payne entered the Canada Games with previous experience at national youth competitions, having won gold medals at both the 2023 and 2022 Canadian championships as a member of Team Ontario, and was named game MVP on two occasions during the 2022 run, including the final game.
“It’s a lot faster and a lot more difficult, but it’s so much more fun to just be in that space and experience it,” Payne said of playing at the national level in a 2023 interview with the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Keaton Hills.
Although most of her summer days are now consumed by lacrosse, Payne’s initial interest in the sport stemmed from her dislike of soccer.
“My parents were like, ‘Well, if you don’t like soccer, you have to do something else.’ So we started with box lacrosse. That branched out into field lacrosse as well,” recounted Payne, who also plays field lacrosse for her high school team, made up mostly of male players, at Sacred Heart in Stittsville.
When Payne first started lacrosse, there was no designated goaltender and they would rotate positions. When it was Payne’s turn to play in net, she found that she really enjoyed it, so the next season she asked her coach if she could stick with it the whole year and she agreed.
Current Knights coach Hunter Gibbons said Payne has become a strong performer under pressure and a hard worker.
“Kylie is kind of like the mom of the team within the Nepean Knights,” Gibbons highlighted. “She’s played for a long time and has been a really consistently strong goaltender.”
Coaches have made a large impact on Payne, who’s got her eye on the big picture when it comes to her long-term lacrosse goals.
“My personal role model is my first coach I had when playing girls box lacrosse, Ashantae Spalding,” Payne wrote in her Canada Games bio. “She has played all over the country for a plethora of teams. Also, she works well with children and introducing them to the sport.
“I want to be like her and show everyone around me kindness and support while also being my best player.”
Ottawa at the Canada Games Daily Newsletter
A huge team of 48 Ottawa athletes is competing at the St. John’s 2025 Canada Summer Games in Newfoundland. The Ottawa Sports Pages will be sending out a free daily email newsletter with recaps, previews and profiles throughout the Aug. 9-24 national youth multi-sport event.
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