“Scary for Me to Go Up and Race”: Olympics Swimming Champion Was Once Left Overwhelmed Despite Raging Success as a 16-Year-Old

The 2016 Rio Olympics brought four Gold Medals to Canada, one of which was in the swimming category. Overall, Canada faired pretty well in swimming during the 2016 Olympics—winning one Gold, one Silver, and four Bronze. It was mostly due to the efforts of a 16-year-old girl who had just made her debut at the Olympics and bagged 4 medals out of the 6 they won.

Penny Oleksiak was then a teenager who went into the Rio Olympics with big dreams. She achieved tremendous success, winning the Gold in 100m freestyle tying with USA’s Simone Manuel as they both finished at 52.70 seconds. Oleksiak also won Silver for 100m Butterfly and 2 Bronze medals with her Canadian national team in 4×100 m freestyle and 4x200m freestyle. Life was never the same for Oleksiak after that and it did turn for the worse for a while.

Penny Oleksiak struggled with her meteoric rise in Olympics at an early age

Oleksiak achieved an unbelievable amount of global success at an early age and people adorned her with compliments and praises everywhere she went. While the attention tripped well with Oleksiak in the beginning, things took a gloomy turn for her when she realized that the normalcy of her life was taken away.

In an interview with Reuters, Oleksiak said, “I struggled with having ‘Olympic champion’ attached to my name at swim meets. It was almost scary for me to go up and race”. Quick fame, although hard-earned, could very quickly take away the pleasures of normalcy from life. As a 16-year-old kid, Oleksiak naturally felt overwhelmed. She continued, “But now it’s more motivating to me,” just as she started coping with it before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

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Oleksiak continued to say, “When I get up to race and people say, ‘Olympic champion, Penny Oleksiak,’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, that is me. I did that. And I’m going to do it again hopefully and I’m going to show you right now that I can be fast”. Taking a leaf out of many young prodigies who came before her and faced similar challenges with early fame, Oleksiak learned to accept all her credibilities and be proud of them.

Dealing with personal loss, and Oleksiak’s performance in Tokyo 2020

In 2018, her grandmother passed away, and she found herself in another slump once again. She left the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia without any medals and pulled out of the Pacific Swimming Championships the same year. She, however, found herself steady as the Canadian team prepped well for the Tokyo Olympics 2020.

Oleksiak went on to win 2 Bronze Medals, one each in 200m freestyle individual and 4x100m medley relay with team Canada. She also won a Silver in the 4x100m freestyle relay team event but couldn’t win a Gold. Nevertheless, at 22 years old and with 7 Olympic medals, Oleksiak is currently Canada’s most decorated Olympian. Do you think Penny Oleksiak will go on to be one of the greatest female Olympic swimmers of all time? Let us know.

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