More shine for this Penny
Rio’s breakout star is our pick for Canada’s best
TORONTO — Out of the water, Penny Oleksiak does little to distinguish herself from the typical Canadian high schooler.
She’s at one with her cellphone, gets nagged about doing her homework and was thrilled that one of the perks of being a four-time Olympic medallist was getting a free slice from the owner of her local pizza joint.
Penny Oleksiak in the water? Well, there’s nothing ordinary about her at all.
The 16-year-old Toronto swimmer made history during a remarkable six days in the Rio Olympic pool this past August.
And in doing so, Oleksiak did far more than endear herself to a country a hemisphere away.
With two bronze medals and a silver to accessorize the gold she won in spectacular fashion, Oleksiak became the most decorated Canadian Olympian in a single Summer Games.
She did so with natural talent, nerves of steel and — the key ingredient — a thirst for victory.
Oleksiak was the runaway choice as our female athlete of the year, selected in a survey of Postmedia sports writers and editors across the country.
From a kid who began 2016 unsure if she’d even make Swimming Canada’s Olympic team, she became the breakthrough star of the Games, regardless of gender, sport or country.
“I think I really learned that I’m stronger than I think,” Oleksiak said recently. “I want to say that just because going into Rio, I definitely had my doubts about myself. I didn’t think I’d be able to even get into finals. I think I proved to myself that I trained pretty hard last year and that I was able to exceed expectations.”
Oleksiak’s Olympic debut was an impressive one. Capped off by her gold medal in the 100-metre freestyle event, she became Canada’s first summer athlete to win four medals in one Games. That gold was the first by a Canadian swimmer in the near-quarter-century since Mark Tewksbury in 1992.
In her nine races at the Rio Olympic Aquatic Centre, Oleksiak set five Canadian records and a world junior record. Swimming the anchor leg, she helped lift her teammates to bronze in the four-by-100-metre and four-by-200-metre freestyle relay events and then went solo for a silver in the 100-metre butterfly.
The show-stopper, however, was the gold she captured in the women’s 100-metre free. Finishing a tick of a second off world-record-holder Cate Campbell of Australia in her semifinal, and with three medals already in the bag, Canadian officials were quietly confident of a big performance.
“By the time the 100 freestyle came around on Day 6, our expectations had changed,” Ben Titley, Oleksiak’s coach, said.
“We certainly went into the meet just hoping for good experiences and a learning experience. We knew she was very, very capable, but to get the first three medals probably changed somewhat the expectations of what we thought was possible for the 100 freestyle.”
What followed was a jawdropping performance that showed a killer competitive instinct. In seventh as she rocketed off the wall after the first 50 metres, Oleksiak went into overdrive. The mighty strokes over the final 25 metres were a thing of power and sporting beauty as she touched in a dead heat for first with American Simone Manuel in an Olympic record time of 52:70 seconds.
“The big thing was not actually the last 25 metres, but the 26 seconds after,” Titley told Postmedia. “Penny doesn’t actually turn around to look at the scoreboard to see what the result is. That’s something I’ve never seen in any senior athletes, world champions, world record holders, let alone by a 16-year-old … being OK with what you’ve done, being content with knowing you’ve given 100 per cent effort and the result to a certain extent is immaterial — I think that’s probably one of the most telling examples of what makes Penny who she is.”
Although the Olympic performances were her true breakout — and arguably the most impressive first-time showing by any athlete in Rio — she offered a hint at what was to come earlier in the year. At the national Olympic trials in April, Oleksiak won the 100-metre freestyle and 100-metre butterfly, setting Canadian records in both, following dominant, record-setting performances at the world junior championship.
While it’s a ludicrous comparison at this point, it’s worth nothing that the greatest Olympic swimmer of all time, American Michael Phelps, had one fifth-place finish in his teenage Olympic debut. So perhaps the most exciting side of Oleksiak is what comes next.
“I don’t want to put any undue pressure on her, but I will say, when you have a 16-year-old who (does what she did) in her first Olympics, the sky is the limit,” Swimming Canada high-performance director John Atkinson said. “In the next four years, we are going to find out.”