Mary Jibb captures Canada’s 1st gold medal at Para swimming worlds in record time

Ottawa: Mary Jibb has set the tone for Canada at the Para swimming world championships. Jibb earned the first gold medal for the 19-member team in Singapore, lowering her Canadian and Americas record to two minutes 32.90 seconds in the women’s 200-metre individual medley SM9 final on Monday.

In her morning preliminary race, the 18-year-old broke the previous Canadian/Americas mark of 2:37.54 by Stephanie Dixon from the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing.

The 2:32.90 performance on the second day of competition would have won gold at the Paralympics last summer in Paris.

“I definitely feel like it hasn’t sunk in yet. A year ago, I would never have dreamed that I would be standing on top of the world podium,” Jibb told Swimming Canada from the OCBC Aquatic Centre within the Singapore Sports Hub.

Fourth in the 200 IM final after the opening butterfly, Jibb moved into second spot midway through the race after the backstroke and held the position through the breaststroke, 50 metres from the finish.

Mary Jibb of Muskoka, Ont., set an Americas record time of 2:32.90 in the women’s 200-metre individual medley SM9 final, to claim Canada’s first gold medal at the World Para Swimming Championships in Singapore.

She dominated the final leg to prevail by a comfortable margin over Anastasiya Dmytriv of Spain (2:35.36), the 2024 Paralympic bronze medallist. Reigning Paralympic gold medallist and two-time world champion Zsófia Konkoly of Hungary took bronze (2:36.09).

“We’ve been working really hard on my breaststroke. And then freestyle, I just had to bring it home,” Jibb said. “In the last 25 [metres], I saw in my peripherals that there was nobody, so I thought, ‘I got [the gold].'”

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Should Jibb now be considered one of the top S9 swimmers in the world?

“I guess so, yes,” she said, laughing. “It feels pretty surreal.”

Watch live coverage of every race in Singapore on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem, with competition resuming Monday at 9 p.m. ET. The live streaming schedule is available here.

Jibb, who was born and raised in Bracebridge, Ont., suffered a stroke at age five that affected her right side. She began practising swimming as physiotherapy and it led to training for competitions.

Last March, the former Muskoka Aquatic Club member moved to Surrey, B.C., to train under Jy Lawrence with the Pacific Sea Wolves.

Lawrence, a member of the Canadian coaching staff in Singapore, had a front-row seat to her athlete’s performance on Monday.

“The drive that she came to training with, and how she executed exactly what was asked of her … I don’t know if proud necessarily encompasses how I feel about an athlete who’s able to do that,” Lawrence said of Jibb. “The trust that she had in the process, I’m beyond proud.”

Jibb qualified for her first Paralympics in May 2024 at the Canadian trials in Toronto.

She competed in three women’s finals that summer at the Paralympics in Paris, her first major international event. She placed fifth in 100 backstroke S9, seventh in 200 IM S9 and eighth in 100 butterfly S9.

“I’m gunning for 2028 [Paralympics in Los Angeles] and 2024 was just the cherry on top,” Jibb told the Bracebridge Examiner newspaper in September 2024. “I wasn’t expecting to make this team; my goal has been [the] 2028 [Canadian Paralympic] team.”

Jibb had an outstanding international debut at a World Series event in early 2024, grabbing bronze in the open 100 breaststroke SM9 in Indianapolis.