MANAGING PENNY
Handlers aim to get the most from seemingly boundless capability
When Mike Babcock was coaching Team Canada to back-to-back Olympic hockey gold medals he didn't play Sidney Crosby every shift. Instead, he managed Crosby's ice time to maximize his contributions over the duration of the pressure-filled tournament.
Similarly, on the unfrozen water of the Tokyo Aquatic Centre, Ben Titley and his fellow Swimming Canada coaches are carefully supervising the workload of the medal machine that is Penny Oleksiak and setting her up to deliver during the biggest moments of the nineday meet.
The coaching and development staff are well aware of Oleksiak's drive and her relentless engine when she competes — and with it, a tendency to leave nothing in the tank. But with a torrid schedule that could have seen her swim as many as six races over a 36-hour period this week, a plan had to be designed to maximize effort and results while maintaining her physical peak.
“Everybody knows what Penny is capable of as she continues to prove herself,” Titley said in an interview with Postmedia. “The only thing you don't know is how many good swims we have in her. This is something we have to manage as we go to conserve her energy.
“In her last 15 months, she's raced four times. In the first five days of the Olympics, there is an opportunity that she would have races nine times in the meet. She would have already competed 200 times more in five days than she has in 15 months.”
If anyone can handle such a workload, it would appear to be the 21-year-old Oleksiak. But the goal is to make sure she's as ready to fire on Thursday when she hopes to defend her Olympic gold in the 100-metre freestyle as she is when called upon to swim the fourth leg of the 4x200-metre freestyle relay earlier in the meet.
Such a challenge isn't unique to Oleksiak, of course. In fact, some of the greatest in her sport have maximized the opportunities, most notably the best of them all, American Michael Phelps. But it takes strategic coaching to make it work at utmost efficiency.
“You have to manage her workload and they're masters at it,” said Canada's Own the Podium CEO and former world-class swimmer, Anne Merklinger. “(Titley) and all the coaches. It's such a team effort. It's about monitoring performance throughout the Games. How are they feeling in training? How are they feeling on race days? What's the best strategy?
“Nine days is a long competition — it's one of the longest events in the Games. So managing workload is critical.”
Helping navigate the task is the depth of the Canadian team, which has helped afford Oleksiak the opportunity to rest during a relay qualifying heat here and there. For example, with only minimal (if any) risk, the coaching staff did just that for Wednesday's 4x200 heat when they sat Oleksiak and Summer Mcintosh with the confidence that other swimmers would easily have enough power to secure a lane for the final the following day.
Adding to the challenge for the Tokyo meet was the fact that Oleksiak added the 200 free as an event of focus. Unlike in athletics, where 100- and 200-metre runners are considered sprinters, in aquatics the 200 is considered more middle distance.
For a swimmer who has been a force in the 100, training to be competitive in the 200 isn't an easy transition. That's why Oleksiak's bronze in the 200 free — her second of these Games and sixth of her groundbreaking Olympic career — was so impressive.
At 6-foot-1, Oleksiak appears stronger than she was in 2016, a factor that can only help her stamina.
“I've just been training really, really hard for the last year and a half and I would say it's been one of my most consistent years in a while,” Oleksiak said before departing for Tokyo. “I've just put in a lot of work and because of that, I'm honestly excited to see how fast I can go.”