There was Mark Tewksbury, an Olympic champion and now CBC analyst, mind you, crying with joy – mimicking every stroke as Penny came home – with the first swimming gold medal since he had won 24 years ago in Barcelona.
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Penny Oleksiak may be an Olympic gold medallist, but the Canadian swimmer is also a teenager who runs up her cellphone data bills and eats doughnuts all the time. But one Canadian record she’ll nearly definitely never touch is most Olympic appearances, which is held by equestrian athlete Ian Millar.
How can she be so good at 16?
Toronto native Penny Oleksiak was in seventh position after turning at the wall for the final 50-metres of the 100-metre freestyle finals on Thursday night. “She is big and strong and mentally strong”, said her 4×200-metre relay teammate Katerine Savard. The most medals ever won by a Canadian at a single Games is five-Cindy Klassen’s gold, two silver and two bronze in speed skating at Turin 2006. Amongst swimmers, she moved ahead of Anne Ottenbrite (1984), Victor Davis (1984) and Elaine Tanner (1968), all of whom won three medals.
“I’m inspired, really. It’s incredible that she can do this stuff at such a young age”, she says. “She is more advanced for her age”.
Where do her accomplishments rank in Canadian Olympic history?
Simone Manuel (USA) of USA and Penelope Oleksiak (CAN) of Canada celebrate winning joint gold medals and also jointy breaking an Olympic record in the Women’s 100m Freestyle Final.
Where do her accomplishments rank in global Olympic history? East German swimmer Kristin Otto holds the record for most gold in a single Olympics, going 6-for-6 in 1988.
John Atkinson, high performance director for Swimming Canada, says this Olympic squad has already surpassed his expectations. She just recently won five medals at a festival meet, and her collection grows. Own the Podium targeted swimming as a sport to invest in – along with track and field, due to the vast number of medals available – but weren’t sure how quickly it would pay off.
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Penny is the needle in the haystack, the diamond in the rough, the-one in-a-million we can still, incredibly, stumble upon. Winning medals was supposed to start happening in 2018, two years out from the Tokyo Olympics. Her and others. We knew our investment would pay off over the long term. The investment paid off early.
