Katie Vincent, Sloan MacKenzie gold leads Canada's canoe/kayak march to Pan Am Games podium

Canadian paddlers carried Friday's success into the penultimate day of competition at the Pan Am Games in Santiago, Chile.

Canoeists Katie Vincent of Mississauga, Ont., and Sloan MacKenzie of Windsor Junction, N.S., led the way with a gold medal in the C2 500-metre sprint, reaching the finish in one minute 54.26 seconds to defeat the Chilean duo of María Mailliard and Paula Gómez by 17-100ths of a second.

The Canadians had previously secured an Olympic spot for next summer in Paris with a bronze-medal performance in August in the C2 500 at the sprint canoe world championships in Duisburg, Germany.

The 27-year-old Vincent, from Mississauga, Ont., earned bronze in her 2021 Summer Games debut with Laurence Vincent-Lapointe in the C2 500 in Tokyo.

Earlier this year, Vincent was off the water for over four weeks after breaking two bones in her arm in a cycling accident a little more than three months from worlds.

In Duisburg, she also successfully defended her world title in the mixed C2 500 race with Connor Fitzpatrick of Dartmouth, N.S., who began Saturday's medal haul in Chile posting a time of 3:55.13 for C1 1,000m bronze.

The C2 race involves two-person canoes, with paddlers in a kneeling position using single paddles, while Fitzpatrick held a single paddle.

José Román Pelier of Cuba won the race in 3:48.69, followed by Brazil's Isaquias Queiroz (3:54.05).

Courtney Stott of Pickering, Ont., followed with K2 500 bronze with Ottawa's Madeline Schmidt, stopping the clock in 1:42.84 behind Mexico (1:41.98) and Argentina (1:42.45).

The K2 event features two paddlers seated in tandem using double-bladed paddles to perform cyclical repetitions of a forward stroke in phase.

Canada's Nick Matveev, Pierre-Luc Poulin, Laurent