Madison Kryger Wins Her 6th Race, Breaks Regan Rathwell’s Meet Record, to Close OJI

2024 Ontario Junior International

• December 12-15, 2024
• Toronto, Ontario
• Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre
• SCM (25 meters)
• Meet Central
• Live Results
• Live Stream
• Day 1 Recap | Days 2 & 3 Recap

More Canadian Para Records and a sixth win for Madison Kryger‘s performance highlighted the final day of competition at the 2024 Ontario Junior International meet.

Kryger wrapped her meet up with a 2:04.01 in the 200 backstroke, giving her six wins in six races at the meet. That time was a new OJI record, the only one broken in the four day meet, and undercut her own personal best time of 2:04.83 from an early-November meet.

The previous record of 2:04.17 was set by Paris 2024 Olympic qualifier Regan Rathwell in 2021. Rathwell swims at Tennessee, where Kryger is committed to race in fall 2026.

Kryger’s Results, all Personal Bests:

• 200 IM – 2:10.07
• 200 free – 1:55.55
• 50 back – 27.03 (Ontario Age Record)
• 100 back – 57.23 (Ontario Age Record)
• 400 free – 4:06.79
• 200 back – 2:04.01

Kryger scratched heats of the 100 free on Sunday.

12-Year-Olds’ Big Results Continue

12-year-old Shima Taghavi, who broke three Canadian Age Group Records previously held by Olympic gold medalist Summer McIntosh in the first three days of the meet, swam only one race on Sunday: the 50 breaststroke. She finished 9th in 32.92.

While Canada doesn’t officially keep national age group records in 50-meter stroke races for 11-12s, they do provide all-time rankings, and that time by Taghavi moves to the top of the list – surpassing her own 32.98 from October. The #2 swimmer on that list Maya Holt swam 33.02 in 2020.

Annie Xu, meanwhile, finished 10th in the timed finals of the 800 free in 8:58.55. That puts her just five seconds behind Canada’s Summer McIntosh, the National Age Group Record holder, at the same age.

Canadian Para Records

Several Canadian Para-Swimming Records fell on Sunday as well, including at least two in the women’s 100 free. Mary Jibb won the event with a 914-point swim, touching in 1:03.77, which is a new record in the S9 class; Jordan Tucker was 4th in that race with a 433 point swim, but her 1:57.16 was still good enough for a new S4 National Record.

Other Highlights

Two swimmers, Ali Sayed and Benjamin Winterborn, wrapped up big meets with more wins on Sunday.

Camo 17-year-old Sayed won the boys’ 100 free in 47.40, leading the field by more than two seconds. His previous best time coming into the meet was a 47.70 that he swam at this meet in 2023. He previously won the 50 free (21.70), 50 fly (23.36), and 100 fly (51.75), all personal bests.

Sayed is committed to swim at Arizona State University in the United States next fall – one of the best sprint programs in the country.

Benjamin Winterborn, meanwhile, a first year on the varsity at the University of Toronto, completed a sweep of the men’s backstroke events with a 1:56.31 in the 200 back. That takes 1.2 seconds off his lifetime best of 1:57.58 from this meet last year. The time also would have been third in the short course meters prelims of last year’s U Sports Championships, just .13 seconds behind his Toronto teammate Andrew Herman (the pool was flipped to long course for finals).