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Relays roll into final session in Windsor

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WINDSOR, Ont. – Canada will look to maintain Saturday’s gold-medal momentum with five finals tonight as the FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) wrap up in Windsor, Ont.

Two more Canadian relays and three individual swimmers will swim for the podium in finals, which begin at 6:30 p.m.

Sandrine Mainville, Alexia Zevnik, Taylor Ruck, and Sarah Darcel got today’s morning session off to a good start. They lowered the Canadian 4×50-m freestyle relay record in a time of 1 minute, 37.91 seconds to progress to tonight’s final seeded third.

The previous record of 1:40.77 was set in 2009 and also had Mainville as the lead-off split.

The women’s 4×100-m medley relay will also be swimming in this evening’s final. Hilary Caldwell, Rachel Nicol, Katerine Savard, and Taylor Ruck advanced fourth in 3:53.68. Caldwell’s backstroke split of 57.84 was a personal best.

“It’s the last day, it’s pretty exciting to hopefully end on a high note,” said Nicol, of Lethbridge, Alta.

Kierra Smith of Kelowna, B.C. and Winnipeg‘s Kelsey Wog advanced to finals in the 200-m breaststroke. Smith is going into tonight’s final second after a 2:19.87 in prelims, while Wog advanced third in 2:20.26.

“I’m looking forward to trying to get to the top of the podium tonight. I would love to get a gold for Canada,” said Smith.

“To be able to race in front of a home crowd is something we don’t get to do a lot so I’m really looking forward to that.”

“To be able to race in front of a home crowd is something we don’t get to do a lot so I’m really looking forward to that.”

Katerine Savard of Pont-Rouge, Que. will also be competing in finals. The 23-year-old is going into the 100-m butterfly final seeded fifth after swimming 56.93 in Saturday’s semifinal.

Canada has five medals heading into the final day of the world short-course championships, its most at this competition since Athens 2000.

Canada’s best ever medal total was eight in Hong Kong in 1999, where the team set nine national records. Sunday’s relay record was the 16th Canadian record performance at these championships.

CBCSports.ca is streaming the championships at http://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/summer/aquatics/world-short-course-world-championships-1.3881730

Sportsnet One will also be airing a final highlight show 6 a.m. ET Monday.

For complete results, visit http://www.omegatiming.com/Competition?id=000110000DFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF&sport=AQ&year=2016