Tommy Zaferes/World Triathlon – Nico van Dartel/Cycling Canada – Emanuele Di Feliciantonio/IJF
Summer officially started this week and this first weekend of summer will be action-packed for many of Team Canada’s athletes.
It will be a three day weekend in Quebec and fans in Montreal will have the opportunity to cheer on Canadian triathletes competing in a World Triathlon World Series event. On the other side of the planet, Christa Deguchi, who was crowned world champion last month, will compete in a judo grand slam in Mongolia.
Canada’s top women’s 3×3 basketball team will look to repeat last year’s success when the Canadians compete in the FIBA Women’s 3×3 Series in Orleans, France. After a string of consecutive fourth places, Molly Simpson will lead Canada for two rounds of the BMX Racing World Cup in the Netherlands as the Canadian street skateboarding specialists look to earn valuable points in the standings as they qualify for Paris 2024 during a competition in Rome .
Here are five recommended sports to watch this weekend:
judo
Canadian judokas in action at IJF Grand Slam in Ulaanbaatar, in Mongolia. After securing her second career world title last month, Christa Deguchi, who has won six career Grand Slams, will be looking to add to her tally. But in the women’s 57kg category, the competition will be fierce, as will her compatriot Jessica Klimkait, who has won five career Grand Slam titles and has been on the podium at 13 consecutive tournaments, including the most recent World Championship, where she won bronze. The tournament for this weight category takes place on Friday, as does the women’s 52 kg tournament, where Kelly Deguchi, Christa’s sister, will take to the tatami.
In action in the women’s 63kg race on Saturday will be Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard, silver medalist at the 2022 World Championships and currently runner-up in the world. She has won three Grand Slam gold medals in her career. Also on Saturday, François Gauthier-Drapeau will compete in the men’s 81 kg category. Kyle Reyes, also a silver medalist at the 2022 World Championships, will compete in the under 100kg category on Sunday while Luis Krieber-Gagnon will compete in the men’s 90kg event.
triathlon
THE World Triathlon World Series – also called the World Triathlon Championship Series – the most prestigious world triathlon circuit, makes a stop in Montreal this weekend. The women’s and men’s individual races will take place in Old Montreal on Saturday. These competitions are in sprint format and include a 750m swim, 20km bike ride and 5km run compared to the Olympic competitions, which have double the distance in each event. Sunday will see the mixed relay, a competition in the Olympic program in which two women and two men will each swim 300m, cycle 8km (7km for the Montreal race) and run 2km.
Tyler Mislawchuk, silver medalist at last weekend’s World Cup in Huatulco, as well as Charles Paquet and Martin Sobey will compete in the men’s race, while Dominika Jamnicky and Emy Legault will compete in the women’s race. The composition of the Canadian team that will take part in Sunday’s race will be announced at a later date.
Basketball 3×3
A level of FIBA Women’s 3×3 Series Basketball takes place in Orléans, France on Friday and Saturday. For their part, the Canadian quartet of Kacie Bosch, Paige Crozon, Katherine Plouffe and Michelle Plouffe, who skipped the first five stages of the series, will return to this circuit. Last year they scooped top honors at the FIBA Women’s 3×3 Series Finals.
The Canadians are No. 1 in the tournament and are dying to forget their disappointing quarterfinal loss to France at the FIBA 3×3 World Championship earlier this month. The French team participating in this weekend’s tournament included just two players who were part of the team that then defeated Canada.
The round-robin phase takes place on Friday. In Group A Canada meets Italy and Neftchi, one of the two teams from Azerbaijan. The top two teams in each of the four groups advance to the quarter-finals on Saturday. The semi-finals and final will follow later on Saturday.
BMX
Round 3 and 4 of the BMX racing world cup takes place on Saturday and Sunday in Papendal, The Netherlands. Molly Simpson, 20, will be the only Canadian to compete in the women’s.
Seventh in the world rankings, she won her first World Cup medal in October 2021 and won bronze at the U23 World Cup last summer. At both World Cup races, held in early June in Sakarya, Turkey, she finished fourth in the elite races.
The men will feature Riley Lavorato, Riley Meyer-Clément and Ryan Tougas.
skateboard
The qualifying process for the Paris 2024 street skateboarding events has begun and this weekend some of Canada’s top street skateboarding specialists are taking part in a stage World Skateboarding Tour in Rome, in Italy, an Olympic Qualification Series event. They try to collect valuable points in the World Skateboarding Olympic Ranking.
Two Canadians will continue the competition after qualifying. Micky Papa and Cordano Russell finished 13th and 14th respectively in Thursday’s men’s qualifiers, joining the 27 athletes set to compete in Friday’s quarterfinals. The semi-finals take place on Saturday, followed by the final on Sunday.
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