And even though Oleksiak, just 16 years of age, has already won four medals here, including two bronze in earlier relays, she still felt like she didn’t live up to expectations in her leg, in which she swam the butterfly.
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“Even before we had Penny four years ago it was insane”.
“I don’t know, maybe”, Oleksiak said.
“I just feel like I had so much more I could have put into that race”. Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden received the third medal, a bronze. All of them played musical instruments. “With 15m left to go, you could just see her storming back into the lead and I just started to repeat “omg omg omg” to myself until she touched the wall”.
“I think everyone dreams about becoming an Olympic champion”. “I’m just not super happy with that race”. She has won more medals at a single Summer Olympics than any other Canadian and she is the first Olympic champion from any country to be born after January 1, 2000.
Davis had three medals in 1984, too, with a gold and two silvers joined by another silver four years later in Seoul. And most of all, her four medals in Rio, including a silver and two bronzes, make her the most decorated Canadian ever at a single Olympics. Her reaction to finding out she won was so sweet, it was near unbearable. “She didn’t win just any Olympic gold medal”.
“Totally not”, deadpanned Penny’s mother Alison, her tongue only slightly in cheek. He paid for the family to come to Rio after his sister unexpectedly made the Olympic team with a series of upset wins at the Canadian trials in April. They had all watched the race from the second last row, “U”, and held their breath with the rest of the crowd as Penny stretched for the wall.
And there’s the story of the Burlington family, inspired by the women’s rugby team win, making Olympic scenes with sidewalk chalk. “She likes keeping you on your toes”.
Maclean’s reporter Jonathon Gatehouse spoke to Penny’s sister Hayley, a rower at Boston’s Northeastern University, up in the stands after the family had been on the roller coaster of seventh at the turn nd then turn it on. But one Canadian record she’ll nearly definitely never touch is most Olympic appearances, which is held by equestrian athlete Ian Millar.
“We’ve been very up front with any of the coaches she’s had over the past couple of years that she is a teenager”, she said. “She gave us a heart attack. She has always excelled through her age group years, like she still is”. “(She) never gave up”.
“I’m going to be taking a few weeks off after this”. Tanner was 17 when she accomplished the feat while Ottenbrite was 18 when she earned her haul.
“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”, says Ben Titley, head coach for the Olympic team and Swimming Canada’s High Performance Centre in Toronto.
“Penny had an unbelievable week obviously”, Van Landeghem said.
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 will no doubt have the opportunity to swim for a big USA college if she chooses, where some of the best swimmers are recruited.
“Penny is well aware of the fact that a conversation will happen in terms of what she will or will not be attending and who will be attending with her”, she said.
Penny Oleksiak, right, set off an online firestorm with her gold-medal performance Thursday night. Phil Edwards won five bronzes from 1928-1936. “They actually improved by 11.92 seconds in a year”, he says proudly.
But no one is disputing that it is the 16-year-old Oleksiak who is driving the bus.
“She blew her data when she came down here. She obviously has a strong belief in her training and racing ability”. “And a racer is someone you always want on your side at the Olympic Games”.
Rio was supposed to be the Games of experience for Oleksiak but history often shouts back “don’t be daft – she’s ready to roll – seize the day”.
Still, it’s an understatement to say that Oleksiak is off to a good start.
“I really hope that people in Canada and the businesses in Canada really step up and help our best athletes be successful at the next Olympics”, Titley, who is a former British Olympic coach, told The Globe and Mail. “I’m a big believer in momentum. So it’s really hard to come here and not have that transfer to the results”, he said afterwards. But her work in Rio probably isn’t done. I didn’t think at 27-years-old that I could do that.
It will have a “huge impact” on young, Canadian swimmers, he said.
Oleksiak herself seems a little bewildered, or even frightened by all the fuss. “But she’s been so competitive I wondered what she would do”.
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As of Friday, Canadian women had won eight medals.
