Red Deer swimmer Rebecca Smith is set to step into the spotlight this week at the Commonwealth Games.
The Red Deer aquatic star, who now swims out of the Scarborough Swim Club in Toronto, will compete in Gold Coast, Australia starting on Thursday.
Smith, 18, will swim three individual events at the competition, the 50 and 100-metre butterfly and the 50M freestyle. She’s also in the mix to swim on opening night in the 4X100M freestyle relay.
In her first appearance with the senior national team at the Budapest 2017 FINA World Championships last summer, she competed in the 4×100M and 4×200M freestyle relays.
As a butterfly swimmer on the mixed medley relay team, she brought home bronze from Budapest.
Earlier this season Smith also had top finishes, with a third in both the 200M freestyle and 100M butterfly at Pro Swim Series events in March.
She even had a strong showing at the Lausanne Swimming Cup in Switzerland in Dec., where she beat European short-course champion Charlotte Bonnet of France for third in the 200M freestyle. That was quickly followed up with a third-place finish in the 100 butterfly.
Smith will be joined in Australia by Taylor Ruck, 17, Kayla Sanchez, 16, two of her close friends from the Swimming Canada High Performance Centre- Ontario. Smith said the training environment in Toronto has helped make her a better swimmer.
“It’s amazing, they’re my closest friends and we push each other every day,” Smith said in a Swimming Canada press release.
“I don’t know where I would be today in my swimming without them.”
The Swimming Canada group in Australia is looking to top its total from the last Games in 2014, when they won 11 medals in Glasgow, Scotland.
Email sports tips to Byron Hackett
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