As a skinny 19-year-old in Beijing, he slipped into one of those now-banned, high-tech body suits and won Canada’s sole medal in the pool, a bronze in the 1500m free.
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Oleksiak later wrote a message posted to social media “So incredibly honoured and humbled by everything that’s happened here tonight”.
Oleksiak won her country’s first gold medal at the games in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday in a stunning showing and is the first Canadian to win four medals in a single Olympics session.
To put her accomplishments in the most appropriate perspective possible, that of Michael Phelps himself, consider this: At age 16, Phelps won his first medal at a major global competition, the 200-meter butterfly, at the 2001 World Championships. She finished in an Olympic record time of 52.70 seconds and shared the podium with American Simone Manuel. He was the youngest gold medalist at that time in the Canadian sports history. “She’s very humble. She’s a very lovely person”. She is the sister of Jamie Oleksiak, a defenseman for the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars.
“What I really love about this sport is getting to be in your own lane and race the people beside you”.
Still, it’s an understatement to say that Oleksiak is off to a good start. “So it’s really hard to come here and not have that transfer to the results”, he said afterwards.
“We’ve gotten so much support that I felt like it was my responsibility, and so I think I let a lot of people down and I let myself down too”.
“That brings about a completely different team culture, where everybody knows they can move from the heats through to the semifinals and the finals”, Atkinson said.
He says he will take some time to consider whether he wants to try to come back for a fourth Olympics in Tokyo.
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That truncated break will include one activity she hasn’t been able to do enough of in Rio – hunting Pokemon on her smartphone.
