Exciting finishes at the Pan American Games’ rowing regatta resulted in two silver medals for one local athlete.
Lantzville’s Spencer Crowley reached the podium in both the coxless fours competition and the eight-man coxed crew in races near Guadalajara, Mexico this week.
Crowley – teaming with Parksville’s Kai Langerfeld and Ontario’s Blake Parsons and David Wakulich – reached the finish line in six minutes, 5.65 seconds in the fours, one second behind the gold-medal crew from Argentina and one second ahead of the entry from Cuba. In the eight-man race, Canada's time of 5:41.01 was just over a second behind the gold-medalist U.S. team and less than a second ahead of Argentina.
Two other Nanaimo athletes are also part of Canada’s 493-member contingent at the Pan Am Games.
Aaron Rathy is Canada’s only wakeboarder in Mexico and he is slated to compete today (Oct. 20). Jennifer Park, who bowls out of Nanaimo’s Splitsville Entertainment, will start trying to throw strikes when her event gets underway Sunday (Oct. 23).
One more athlete with a local connection is Team Canada baseball player Mark Hardy. A former member of the Nanaimo Coal Miners, he was the winning pitcher when that club won the Western Canadian championship in 2007.