Seventeen-year-old Lucas MacDonald won Team P.E.I.’s first medal of the 2023 Canada Winter Games Thursday afternoon — a silver in judo, in the male over-81 kg category.
The gold medal went to John Jr. Messé À Bessong, a Quebec athlete who had previously won a world championship in his weight class.
MacDonald — who is from Stratford, P.E.I. — said he felt good about how he’d performed.
“Glad to get a number on the podium for us, so it’s a nice experience,” he said.
MacDonald said his opponent had about 100 pounds on him.
“He was dominant early on and he just put the weight in and sunk me to the floor,” MacDonald said.
He said the silver in judo is a big step for the sport on P.E.I.
“Honestly, you’d like to see the sport grow even more here on the island. It’d just be great to get many more people here. It’s a good representation for it too.”
Coach Matthew McGrath said MacDonald had great performances all day, and they knew the gold medal match would be a tough one.
As for what advice he gave prior to the match, “I suggested he goes around the tree or under the tree and not through the tree, but he had a quick throw … I’m just glad he’s safe and not hurt and had a great experience.”
McGrath said he’s happy to have a world champion at the Canada Games.
“It looks great if you beat a guy like that … if we could have stole the win off him, that looks awesome. So I’m not slighted that he was here at all. I think it’s great,” he said.
There was a big cheering section of P.E.I. fans at Thursday’s gold medal match — including Team P.E.I. chef de mission Jo-Anne Wallace.
“It was wonderful. We’ve had a wonderful couple weeks and it was just so almost overwhelming to see Lucas get the silver medal. We were pretty pleased and pretty proud for him,” said Wallace.
Competitors in judo have won the most medals for P.E.I. at the Winter Games over the years — followed by boxing.
Team P.E.I. still has a few more medal hopes coming up in the final two days of competition.
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