She also the first Canadian to win four medals at a single Olympics.
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Olesiak is the youngest swimmer to ever win a gold medal for Canada.
Given her medal wins, it is nearly a certainty that Oleksiak will be chosen to carry the Canadian flag at the closing ceremony.
“It might sound odd to people back home who say, ‘Oh, she’s Canada’s best swimmer.’ Well, that’s happened in the last three months”, Titley, head coach for the Olympic team and Swimming Canada’s High Performance Centre in Toronto tells Gatehouse.
“This is awesome, to tie for a gold. They look at her and go, ‘Oh yeah, this is something I would really like to do, ‘” Cronin-Schlote told CBC News. “It means so much”.
“Penny is the baby of the family and we’ve had a bit of a mixed bag in terms of our kids going NCAA and some of them staying home”, Alison said.
“We’ve been very up front with any of the coaches she’s had over the past couple of years that she is a typical teenager”, Alison said.
This week, her personal peak might have come when she got Drake tickets for an October concert.
Oleksiak’s mother, Alison, said it’s not clear whether the multiple-medalist will be able to attend the Drake show.
“I think she surprised everyone including our family”, Oleksiak said. “But kind of help her with things, here and there, that she might need some guidance on”.
“Giving her that normality that a lot of people won’t”, said Hayley, who is a rower for Northeastern University.
Her brother Jamie, a six-foot-seven defenceman with the Dallas Stars, brings experience in the high-stakes world of pro sport. One day they got in the pool, and Penny dusted her. The 16-year-old had lamented that the concert was sold out on Twitter; a coach sent out a picture of Penny and fellow medallist Kylie Masse listening to Drake, and in keeping with Oleksiak’s stunning Olympics: it happened.
Canada is having a great meet, British coaches John Atkinson and Ben Titley the helm of an impressive raising of the game for a country that has struggled to get back to the golden days when folk three chairs across the deck at the Commonwealth Games in the heat of relay disqualifications that might decide whether Canadians were mightier in the water than Australians. “She’s just a younger sister with some Olympic medals now”.
“It’s a problem for Jamie right now because he wants to go surfing and he’s not allowed to”. It’s Canada’s fourth medal in swimming.
Like any teenage girl, we have no idea what Penny Oleksiak will become.
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As for how to contend with a daughter who has just rewritten the history books of Canadian sport? “I’m a little panicked on how to handle a teenager after that resume as well”. “And we’re trying to get her to go out a little more competitively here”.
