Oleksiak joins multi-medal club
• In what amounts to a teenage tragedy, Penny Oleksiak has already gobbled up her data plan at these Olympics — leaving her woefully unconnected to the outside world while at the swimming pool.
So upon arriving back at the wifi- enabled athletes’ village in the wee hours of Monday morning, her smartphone buzzed for five minutes straight with a flurry of congratulatory messages from friends, family and Canadians she has never met.
“I’m always on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and everything,” said the 16-year-old swimming sensation some 12 hours after winning silver in the 100- metre butterfly. “Seeing all the notifications, I can’t really go through all of them … I want to look at them all, and I want to like everything, but I can’t.”
She better get used to the social media stardom, and she better become accustomed to the clinking sound of her silver and bronze medals jangling together with every step.
Much to her alarm, the bronze she won Saturday night in the 4x100- metre freestyle relay is already slightly scratched — a fate rower Marnie McBean calls the price of entry to the multi- medal club. McBean, 48, is accustomed to the clink as a four-time Olympic medallist.
“They’re pretty heavy,” Oleksiak said. “I feel like I’m slouching all the time when I’m wearing them, which sucks.”
The added weight around her neck is yet another thing she should probably get used to — and perhaps build up for an even greater load. Oleksiak, who is entering Grade 11 this fall at Toronto’s Monarch Park Collegiate, has three more podium shots at the Rio Games. She’s expected to compete in the 4×200-metre freestyle relay on Wednesday, Thursday’s 100- metre freestyle, and the 4×100- metre medley relay on Saturday.
“My expectation coming into the Olympics was to hopefully make one final,” said the 6- foot-1 speedster known as ‘ The Child’ by her teammates. “I was kind of gunning for a medal in 2020. But to get two here means so much to me.”
And if she can win another one, or two, or three — all the better.
“I’m just for the rest of the week setting my sights on finals,” she said. “I’ ll see if I can make a final and get a lane. That’s what I’m really happy with. If I’m in a final, I have a chance for whatever’s going to come up. But I’m not super nervous.”
While she’s not super nervous, she admits that she could be in a state of shock, with the last 72 hours feeling like a bizarre dream.
The medals don’t seem real. The number at the top of her Twitter page also seems unreal, with her followers doubling to more than 5,500 from 2,500 between Sunday morning and Monday night.
“I don’t really keep count, but it’s gone up quite a lot,” Oleksiak said. “It’s a little overwhelming. Sometimes the apps will crash and stuff. But I mean it’s pretty fun, too.”
Once she finally put her phone down in the wee hours of Monday morning, Oleksiak gingerly placed her medals on the bedside table and closed her eyes.
“I couldn’t fall asleep,” she said. “I had to hold them while I was sleeping, which is kind of lame.”
Come September, Oleksiak plans to resume “normal life” back home in Toronto where she likes to eat a lot of junk food — mainly pizza — and hang out at Tim Hortons with her smartphone- toting friends.
As for the rest of the Olympics, the pressure is non- existent for an athlete who already has exceeded all expectations, including her own.
“I’m for sure happy with two medals,” she said. “If I don’t get another one, I can’t complain at all just because I already have two of them. But if I get another one, that will be pretty amazing.”