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Gabor strikes gold Down Under

Alexandra Gabor is a far from home, but that didn't affect last week's performance. Competing in the Australian age group swimming championships in Sydney, the Whitehorse Glacier Bear logged three medals.

Alexandra Gabor is a far from home, but that didn’t affect last week’s performance.

Competing in the Australian age group swimming championships in Sydney, the Whitehorse Glacier Bear logged three medals.

Racing in the 15-year-old age division, Gabor began her medal haul with a gold in the 100-metre freestyle Tuesday and then won silver the following day in the 50-metre freestyle.

“I think my 100-metre freestyle stands out the most out of all of my swims because it was a best time by quite a bit, and it was a time that I’d been trying to get for a long time,” said Gabor in an e-mail to the News. “Also, because I set a new BC 15-17 age group record in it.”

Her third podium visit came Friday with a second gold in the 200-metre freestyle. Gabor also outdid herself, reaching personal bests in the 100-metre freestyle (56.52), the 400-metre freestyle (4:17.2) and the 100-metre butterfly (1:05.77).

“I feel pretty good about the meet, especially the fact that I got personal bests even though we’re still in hard training and we’re not rested,” said Gabor. “The atmosphere of the meet in general was really exciting and I think I did pretty good overall. Of course, there are some things that I wish I would have done better, but those are just things I need to work on during practice.”

Whitehorse’s Bronwyn Pasloski was also among the 12 Canadians competing in Australia.

On the first day of races, Pasloski won one of three bronze medals Canadian women took that day. Her bronze came in the 400-metre freestyle in the 16-year-old age group.

The two Yukoners will be wrapping up their stay with a four-day training camp, receiving instruction from Australian swim coach Denis Cotterell, coach of Olympic Champion Grant Hackett.

“At the training camp I’m mostly going to focus on just training hard and fixing my technique,” said Gabor.

Up next for Gabor is the Mel Zajac Junior International meet in Vancouver at the end of May.

Contact Tom Patrick at

tomp@yukon-news.com