By Doug Kennedy

Maggie Mac Neil won a gold medal in the 100 metre butterfly at the Tokyo Olympics. Her mom and dad watched from their family cottage outside of Kincardine. Her father, Edward, says she is always a strong finisher in the second half of the race. Mac Neil is from London.

Her parents knew why her reaction was slow after she won, as she is near sighted. She set a Canadian record swimming in 55.59 seconds. She also won a bronze medal in the 400-metre relay.

In a normal year, Susan and Edward would have made that 13-hour flight to be in Tokyo to watch their daughter compete.

Susan is a family doctor in the London area and teaches family medicine at the University of Western Ontario.

It is great to watch all the different sports every day while the Olympics are on. The tough part is Tokyo is 13 hours ahead of us, so the best time to watch is early in the morning. I have not yet been able to get up for 4 a.m. but have made it to the television by 5 a.m. on a couple of occasions.

Congratulations to our women’s soccer team, who beat the United States in an exciting game on Sunday, with a score of 1-0. Now Canada will play in the gold medal game.

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If you are the dressing room of the Toronto Blue Jays, you are happy to see the management of the team is all-in to compete over the next few years to become a play-off team. By trading their fourth overall pick, Austin Martin, along with a pitching prospect for a really good young starting pitcher, shows that the team is committed to making the playoffs. The Jays received Jose Berrios from Minnesota in return. Berrios has pitched well in playoffs for the Twins during  the last two years and is only 27-years-old.

Last year, 16 teams made the playoffs, while this year only 10 will make the cut. Baseball says it will go back to 16 next year, which will really help the Blue Jays, as they play in such a strong division. They also picked up four relievers in the last couple of weeks, which they needed badly.

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The Toronto Raptors went off the board at last week’s draft, like usual. It has worked for them many times over the past 20 years when they have had top 20 picks.

Instead of picking the next rated player guard, Jalen Suggs, they went with forward Scottie Barnes from Florida State University (J.R. Kosmerly- favorite university teams). I have a feeling J.R. will know all about this player. Suggs went to Orlando. It will be interesting to see how these two players perform in future years.