Mary Jibb has won Canada's first gold of the world para swimming championships.
The 18-year-old from Muskoka, Ont., finished the women’s 200-metre individual medley SM9 in two minutes 32.90 seconds on Monday in her world championship debut.
Jibb was fourth after the opening butterfly and second at the 100- and 150-metre marks, but the Canadian dominated the final leg to prevail by a comfortable margin over Anastasiya Dmytriv of Spain (2:35.36), the bronze medallist from 2024 Paris Games.
Hungarian star Zsófia Konkoly, the reigning Paralympic champion and defending two-time world titlist, was third in 2:36.09.
“I definitely feel like it hasn’t sunken in yet. A year ago I would never have dreamed that I would be standing on top of the world podium,” said Jibb, who placed seventh in the event in her first Paralympic Games appearance last summer.
“We’ve been working really hard on my breaststroke. And then freestyle, I just had to bring it home,” Jibb added. “In the last 25, I saw in my peripherals that there was nobody, so I thought, ‘I got it.’"
Katie Cosgriffe of Burlington, Ont., had Canada’s second-best placing on Day 2, finishing fourth in the women’s 200 IM SM10 in a personal best 2:32.36. She was just 29 hundredths of a second off the podium.
Canada opened the world championships with two bronze medals from Nicholas Bennett and Arianna Hunsicker last Sunday. Competition runs through Sunday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 22, 2025.
