Canadian athletes had their best day of the 16th Pan American Games on Thursday, winning five gold medals to take their overall tally to 12. Canada has 39 medals in total and is now third in the rankings behind the United States and Brazil.

MEDAL TABLE

Michelle Li beat Joycelin Ko in an all-Canadian women’s badminton singles final and Grace Gao and Toby Ng won the mixed doubles title. Canada took three out of the five badminton gold medals.

In table tennis Mo Zhang took the women’s singles title and Elise Marcotte and Marie-Pier Boudreau overcame the opposition in the synchronized swimming duet free routine final, thus qualifying the pair for the Olympic Games in London next year.

And in one of the last events of the day, Ashley Mcgregor won the the women’s 200 meters breaststroke, Canada’s first swimming gold medal of the games.

With only two golds medals captured on Thursday, it was an unusually  quite day for Team USA, which has so far dominated the games, winning twice as many medals than any other nation.

U.S. swimmers won just one of the four finals in the evening swimming series (Elizabeth Anne Pelton in the women's 200 meters backstroke), in which Cesar Cielo of Brazil won the 50 meters freestyle – the third gold of the games for the world record holder and Olympic champion.

Although Mexico failed to win any gold medals on Thursday, the Aquatics Center erupted when Fernanda Gonzalez finished third behind Pelton in the 200 backstroke. This was Mexico's fourth bronze swimming medal, an achievement that no really expected at the start of the games.

The U.S. softball team maintained its unbeaten run, downing Canada 12-5. With one day of preliminaries remaining, the four teams looking most likely to qualify for Saturday's semi-finals are the United States, Cuba, Canada and Venezuela.

Irina Falconi of the United States plays Monica Puig of Puerto Rico in the women's tennis final midday Friday.  Falconi is 77th in the WTA rankings 77, and the fourth highest ranked U.S. player of the moment. Puig is ranked 264th in the world and Puerto Rico's top female player.