CALL ME MAYBE, WHEN I GET MORE DATA
Oleksiak pays price of success as congrats arrive from Canada
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, 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,” the 16-year-old swimming sensation said some 12 hours after a silver-medal performance 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 socialmedia stardom and she better become accustomed to the clinking sound of her silver and bronze medals jangling together.
Much to her alarm, the bronze she won Saturday in the 4x100metre 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, has three more podium shots at the Rio Games. She’s expected to compete in Wednesday’s 4×200-metre freestyle relay, Thursday’s 100-metre freestyle and Saturday’s 4×100-metre medley relay.
“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 setting my sights on finals for the rest of the week,” she said. “I’ll see if I can make a final and get a lane. That’s what I’m really happy with.”
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.”