FROM WATER WINGS TO OLYMPIC MEDALS
In the beginning, she was just a kid splashing around in the neighbour’s pool. But it soon became obvious to everyone around her that Penny Oleksiak was a world-class water baby
Loonie for your thoughts, Penny.
Or whatever the going rate is for a teenager’s mind matter these days. Even a teenager who swam out of the blue and into the record books at Estadio Aquatico Olimpico, capturing bronze and silver in a couple of furious days of competition.
The typical about 16-year-old Penny Oleksiak: Totally into the social media groove, Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram, trending humongously on Twitter where her followers more than doubled overnight to well over 5,000, rising still. “Just blowing up.” And for whom, in common teen parlance, everything is, like, you know, “weird.”
The atypical about Penny Oleksiak: Well, six-foot-one for starters, unusually elongated for a female swimmer. A world junior record in the 100-metre butterfly, in the Olympic pool no less. Anchor on the Canadian women’s 4x100m relay that knocked swimming sideways with a long-odds bronze Saturday. Silver on Sunday behind only Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom, who needed a world record time for gold in the 100 butterfly.
With an NHL defenceman brother, a sister who rows for Northeastern University, another brother who played NCAA hockey, a U.S. college Hall of Fame dad in football, basketball and track, and a mom who swam competitively. “For sure sports is a huge deal in my family.”
So, genetically and constitutionally predestined to excel as an athlete, though the Toronto native didn’t even learn to swim until she was 9 years old.
Suddenly a coast-to-coast — with drifts to Buffalo, because her father attended college there and they want a piece of the action — sensation.
It all might be overwhelming, except Oleksiak didn’t appear remotely dazed when she faced reporters at a morning-after press conference Monday. Maybe just a bit tired. “I couldn’t fall asleep.” Thoughts a-swirl after a double-podium finish and two-fer medal count in 24 hours.
“I had to hold them while I was sleeping, which is kind of lame. But it helped me fall asleep.”
She had already used up the free phone data given to athletes, checking out her own hashtag threads, liked and liking, responding to friends. At least all the immediate kinfolk were close at hand. The thumb-tap tom-tom seemed to have seized her awe more than the unanticipated — if not necessarily to Swim Canada — accomplishments in the water. “I don’t really look at messages when I’m at the pool.” But when she got back to the Wifi-gratis village, that phone sprung to zany life, buzz-buzz-buzz. “Kind of funny to see.” More than that, she added with a sense of wonder. “People know who I am. People are asking my friends if they know me. But I haven’t really taken it all in yet, I guess.”
Then she had to put up with some weird questions from journalists at the presser. Like, um, does the clinking of medals bother you whilst walking? “I don’t usually walk and wear my medals. As soon as I get off the podium, I take them off and I put them in my bag. Just ’cause I don’t want to ruin them.”
She’ll let perfect strangers cop a medal feel, though.
“I like giving them to people to hold because . . . it’s an Olympic medal!” Kind of a once-in-wrong, twice-in-a-lifetime, at least. Who knows? Maybe more to come in Rio, where Oleksiak will also compete in the 200-metre freestyle relay Wednesday, the 100-metre free Thursday and the 4x100 medley relay Saturday.
It seems like a whole lot of racing, with this being her first Olympics, her first anything of huge significance, really. No Pan Ams, no Commonwealth Games on the resume. Meh. “People always ask me how I’m going to do it. But I don’t really see it as a lot of races, just because it’s only three more.’’
At world juniors a year ago, she swam four races a day. So that’s not weird. Like, whatever. More probing queries: What grade are you in?
Answer: Going into Grade 11 next term at Monarch Park Collegiate. Did the online course thing this past year, preparing for Olympic trials and stuff. “But I think I focused a little more on swimming than I did on school. So I’m going back to regular school when I get home.’’ Q: What do you do when not swimming?
A: “Pretty normal stuff. Just hang out with my friends. Eat a lot of junk food, which is bad.” Q: Like what? A: “Pizza. And I go (to) Tim’s a lot.” Well, inquiring minds did want to know.
More germane to the big splash Oleksiak has made here — where did she find that big kick towards touching the wall?
“I’ve always worked on having a good finish. I just, like, put everything I can into the last 15 metres because I know that if I don’t I’m going to regret it at the end of the race. So that’s just what I did. I tried to put out everything I had left.”
The teen claims she came to Rio without grandiose goals. “My expectation was to just hopefully make one final.
The fact that I got a medal is pretty amazing for me.”
Talking with relay teammate Michelle Williams after their bronze, both were all, wow, can you believe it, I can’t believe it.
“Even before trials, I didn’t think I was going to make the team.” She wasn’t even among the Star’s 30-towatch preview. “Then, when I made it in the 100m fly, I thought that was it. And now I’m here today with a silver medal in the fly, which is unreal.”
Oleksiak says she’s moved past nervous and is simply eager to get back racing after a day off. “If I can make the final and get a lane, then that’s what I’m really happy with. If I have a lane, then I have a chance for . . . whatever.’’
Another medal is the whatever, but she doesn’t want to sound greedy or cocky. “If I don’t get another, I can’t complain at all because I already have two of them. But if I get another, that would be pretty amazing.
“I think it really set up my career, I guess, right?” Duh, right. She wore her medals yesterday, it being a photo op command performance and all. And, in truth, she’s been sneaking more than a peek at them, back in the village.
“I look at the medals a lot. I feel like they’re not real.
“Which is kind of weird.”