TOKYO – Aurélie Rivard captured Canada’s first swimming medal of the Paralympic Games on Wednesday thanks to a third-place finish in the women’s 50-m freestyle S10.

Despite claiming her sixth career Paralympic medal, the native of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., was disappointed in her performance in an event where she was defending one of her three titles from Rio 2016.

Rivard trailed 20-year-old Anastasiia Gontar of the Russian Paralympic Committee (27.38) and Chantalle Zijderveld of the Netherlands (27.42) from the get-go and was never able to catch up, touching the wall in 28.11 seconds.

Gontar’s winning time was one hundredth of a second off Rivard’s world record swim from Rio.

“I’m feeling really emotional. Not all negative, some positive too,” said the 25-year-old Rivard, who now has three gold medals, two silver and one bronze across three Paralympic Games appearances.

“Just standing on the podium at the Games is something really special regardless of the position and the colour of the medal. This said, I didn’t have a bronze medal in my collection and I didn’t really want one. I didn’t have a good race but the girls deserve the gold and silver medals.

“Of course I wanted to win my title back, which is disappointing, but I’m going to deal with that later. I’m not a sprinter, it’s not my best event. That’s not what I’ve been training for all year long. I need to leave this one in the past and not let it affect my next races.”

Rivard, who trains at the Club de Natation Région de Québec in Quebec City, will be back in the pool on Saturday for the 100-m freestyle S10, hoping to defend another one of her titles from 2016.

“I want to swim faster than I did in Rio. That will be the goal. And then we’ll see what happens.”

Four other Canadians were in action on Day 1 of the swimming competition.

While none of them were able to join Rivard in the finals, first-time Paralympians Nicholas Bennett (High Performance Centre – Quebec) and Shelby Newkirk (Saskatoon Lasers Swim Club) both set Canadian records in their respective events.

Bennett, the youngest Canadian athlete competing in Tokyo at 17, placed ninth in the heats of the men’s 100-m butterfly S14 in 58.38 seconds, lowering his own national mark of 1:00.67 set on July 1^st.

A three-time gold medallist at the Lima 2019 Parapan American Games, the native of Parksville, B.C., was desperately close to reaching the final in his first career Paralympic Games swim but was out-touched at the wall by one hundredth of a second by South Korea’s Wonsang Cho, who earned the eighth and final spot into the medal race.

“I’m pretty happy but also kind of annoyed knowing that I could have made that final with a better touch,” said Bennett, who is set to race in three more events in Tokyo. “I know I can be faster but that was a great first swim of my first Games.”

Newkirk also missed the final by one spot in the women’s 50-m freestyle S6, clocking 35.50, three hundredths slower than Ireland’s Nicole Turner.

The Saskatoon product, who finished ninth in the same event at the 2019 world championships in the S7 category, broke the previous S6 national standard of 38.51 set by Myriam Soliman at the 2019 Parapan Am Games.

“It was good. It was definitely fun to get to do my first-ever Paralympic Games race,” Newkirk said. “I haven’t swam the 50 free in a long time, so it was really nice to get in the water and swim it again.”

In other preliminary races Wednesday in Tokyo (Tuesday evening in Canada), Alec Elliot (Club de Natation Région de Québec / Kitchener, Ont.) finished ninth in the men’s 50-m free S10 with a time of 25.22, while Angela Marina (Brantford Aquatic Club / Cambridge, Ont.) was 11^th in the women’s 100-m fly S14 in 1:12.00.

Wayne Lomas, Swimming Canada’s Associate High Performance Director and National Para Swimming Coach, was pleased with the team’s overall performance on Day 1.

“After so much time waiting, and wondering if we would ever get here, today five members of our team had their opportunity to race. As a country, we celebrate Aurélie’s medal-winning performance in her first real race in nearly 18 months. She showed us all what a champion she is as she won our first medal of these Games. Aurélie and her coach, Marc-André Pelletier, have a very clear plan and continue to develop their partnership.

“I’d also like to pay credit to Nicholas and Shelby, both of whom established new Canadian records for their respective swims in their Paralympic Games debut. Nicholas, coached by HPC-Quebec’s head coach Mike Thompson, and Shelby, coached by Eric Kramer, both acquitted themselves very well in the biggest arena for our sport and I look forward to watching them continue to perform during the rest of these Games.”

Full schedule and results:

https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/paralympic-games/en/results/swimming/paralympic-schedule-and-results-date=2021-08-25.htm