Katie Cosgriffe opened the show on the final night of the Para Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Walnut, Calif., by winning Canada's first gold medal of the meet on Sunday.
The 20-year-old from Burlington, Ont., topped the podium in the women's multi-class 100-metre backstroke final with a season-best time of one minute, 8.1 seconds.
"I knew that I could win, but I wanted to go in with no expectations, just swim my own race," Cosgriffe told CBC Sports' Devin Heroux.
"Usually I look at the board to see what I was out in. [I] didn't even look. I was just focused on my race plan and I'm super, super happy with how that went, and I get a gold medal with it."
The victory represents Cosgriffe's first international gold medal.
Canada's Cosgriffe kicks off final day of Para Pan Pacific Swimming Championships with gold
Cosgriffe (S10) said she is using this event as a benchmark toward the next Summer Games in Los Angeles.
"This morning [in prelims], I wasn't super happy with my swim. This is my first time racing outdoors, and so I knew that going into this meet I really wanted to treat it as practice for LA [2028]," Cosgriffe said.
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Cosgriffe added that while she fell short of her goal of timing lower than 1:08, she's happy to cap her arduous season on top.
"I'm not super happy with that time. This whole season, my goal was to be under 1:08, because my best time from [2025 world championships in] Singapore is so much faster, and so [1:08.1] is okay, that's my fastest time this season," she said.
"This season has been so long, I've dealt with a lot, and so to just end that with a gold medal feels really sweet."
Canada's Cosgriffe 'super excited after 1st international gold medal'
Later in the evening, she tacked on a silver medal in the 100m butterfly, stopping the clock in an Americas-record time of 1:05.77.
"As much as I won gold in the backstroke, [this] meant so much more to me just because this was my fourth 100 of the day," Cosgriffe said.
