opinion

Penny Oleksiak, seen here at the Canada Olympic Swimming trials in 2024, accepted a two-year ban from competitive swimming on Tuesday after missing three whereabouts calls.

When Penny Oleksiak won Canada’s first gold in swimming in a quarter century at Rio 2016, it was such an outlier that she didn’t know what to do.

She didn’t know when to get on the podium, or that she should hold the medal up for photos, and that she should bite down on gold. She was only 16 years old and about to go from a little bit famous to a national obsession.

Canada is having a real moment in swimming. Oleksiak started it. It’s not like people discovered the sport because of her, but every athletic programme in the world is built to chase the leader. With Oleksiak out front, Canada’s women swimmers tr

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