24 seconds in Rio
For several long seconds at the end, she was still just herself, a great swimmer, yes, but not a name in all caps, not yet, not until she turned around.
It was remarkable to watch live. You could see her torso heave as she caught her breath. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Her body shook from the most remarkable 50 metres any Canadian has ever swam.
Inhale. Exhale. And still she wouldn’t turn around.
Penny Oleksiak became a Canadian legend at 16 Thursday night. She passed five of the fastest women alive in the final 50 metres of the women’s 100-metre freestyle and caught a sixth to win Canada’s first Olympic Gold Medal in the pool since 1992.
That’s eight years before Oleksiak was born.
In the process she became something rare in Canadian sports. She joined the likes of Donovan Bailey and Mark Tewksbury as generational Olympic stars.
She is defined now, like they are, by a single moment in time. That clip, those final strokes, the ones that seemed to cut through time, will be played over and over again. You’ll see them in four years, in eight, in 12 and 16.
If she wanted it, Oleksiak could be the voice of Canadian swimming for the rest of her life, even if she never swam again.
But when it happened, when she went from great athlete having a good Games, to PENNY OLEKSIAK, she just paused. It wasn’t completely clear at first, watching on TV, that she had won.
She touched the wall with her right hand — a smooth, decisive jab — and pulled her head up and out of the water. She clung to the end of the pool with her left hand, looked to her right, then to her left and straightened.
She stared ahead, both hands on the wall, as the seconds ticked by.
Speaking to the CBC afterward, Oleksiak said she was just trying to catch her breath.
“The other girls are saying, ‘Penny, you just won gold, turn around,’ ” she said. “And I’m like ‘No, Simone won gold, what are you talking about?’ ”
They were both right. Oleksiak and American Simone Manuel tied for gold. They finished with identical Olympic record times of 52.7 seconds, thanks to Oleksiak’s astonishing final push.
Manuel knew right away she’d won. She touched, turned, breathed then gasped in joy and shock.
Manuel became the first African-American woman to win an individual medal in Olympic swimming, an enormous milestone for the sport in that country.
“It means a lot, especially with what is going on in the world today, some of the issues of police brutality,” Manuel said after the race. “This win hopefully brings hope and change to some of the issues that are going on. My colour just comes with the territory.”
Manuel’s win comes freighted with meaning inside and outside the pool. It is a landmark in a way that Oleksiak’s cannot be. But on a purely athletic level, Manuel will still compete for attention with the likes of Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky on the stacked U.S. swim team.
In Canada, Oleksiak stands all on her own.
As Manuel celebrated, the young Toronto swimmer continued to stare. Even as her family went wild in the stands, Oleksiak didn’t turn. Her mother and sister danced and hugged. Her hockey player brother, Jamie Oleksiak of the Dallas Stars, wiped away a tear. Her father seemed stuck in time.
But Oleksiak herself, she looked like she didn’t quite want to know. Five seconds went by, then 10, 15, 20.
When she finally turned, about 24 seconds after finishing the race, she pulled her top bathing cap off and peeled away her goggles. She bobbed in the water for a moment and then her whole body shook. Her eyes popped and she exclaimed what looked like ‘Oh my goodness’ as she smiled.
Canada has precious few Olympic champions in the summer’s marquee events. Rosie MacLennan won her second consecutive gold in trampoline on Friday, a huge achievement in a sport that remains decidedly niche. Canadians have been dominant at times in the paddling sports and in synchronized swimming. But with the exception of the boycott-tainted 1984 Games, gold medals have been few and far between in swimming and track.
That’s why Bailey’s 9.84 seconds in Atlanta remain so unforgettable, why Tewksbury is still, 24 years after the Barcelona Games, the face of Canadian swimming. It’s why Oleksiak’s life changed the moment she turned around.
Sports has such power at times, such capacity to transmit joy.
With four medals in a single Games, Oleksiak is already one of the greatest Canadian Olympians of all time. She’s also just 16. Before she’s done — she is expected to compete in the women’s 4x100-metre medley relay Saturday night — she might become the greatest, full stop. But no matter what happens from here on out, she’ll always be remembered for that endless instant in the pool, for the kick, the touch and for the pause before it all became real.