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TASHKENT — Canadian swimmers Taylor Ruck and Finlay Knox added to their medal totals on Friday at the second stop of the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup series, continuing a consistent week for Canada’s short-course team.
Ruck, a four-time Olympic medallist from Kelowna, B.C., captured silver in the women’s 100-metre backstroke in 56.38 seconds, behind Dutch winner Marrit Steenbergen, who finished in 55.32. The result gave Ruck her second silver of the meet, after a runner-up finish a day earlier in the 50-metre freestyle, where she touched in 23.68 seconds, just five hundredths behind Poland’s Kasia Wasick.
Knox, of Okotoks, Alta., took bronze in the men’s 200-metre individual medley in one minute 52.33 seconds, behind two American swimmers. It was his third bronze medal of the series stop, after third-place finishes in the 100 butterfly and the 100 individual medley earlier in the week.
The backstroke podium repeated the order from the previous World Cup stop, with Steenbergen again on top and Ruck improving slightly on her earlier time. Race recaps noted how tight the turnarounds were for several finalists swimming multiple events in the same session.
Competition in Tashkent wraps up on Saturday. The three-meet World Cup series then concludes next week in Kazakhstan, giving Canada’s swimmers one more chance to test racing sharpness in a compressed, travel-heavy format that rewards recovery as much as raw speed.
For Ruck, the week has been about narrow margins — a hand’s breadth from gold in the freestyle, a clear second in the backstroke. For Knox, three bronze medals across different events point to range that coaches value when building relay and medley options.
Neither swimmer will treat World Cup medals as the season’s destination. But in October, with the international calendar building again, podium finishes against deep fields are the kind of evidence that winter training is pointed in the right direction.
