Maggie Mac Neil Produced Many Golden Moments During Brilliant Five-Year Run
The list of Canadian women to capture Olympic gold in swimming stands at just four: Anne Ottenbrite was the lone member of the club for 32 years after topping the 200 breaststroke at the 1984 Olympics, but since 2016, one swimmer from Canada has topped the podium at each Games: Penny Oleksiak in the 100 freestyle in 2016, Maggie Mac Neil in the 100 butterfly in 2021 and Summer McIntosh in three events this year in Paris.
McIntosh has become the clear top swimmer in the world after Oleksiak, Taylor Ruck and Kylie Masse, a backstroker with multiple world titles plus medals at three consecutive Olympics, were the key figures in the initial renaissance of the country’s swimming program. Mac Neil fell in between, with her narrow win in the 100 fly final in Tokyo over China’s Zhang Yufei, Australia’s Emma McKeon and the United States’ Torri Huske. That would be Mac Neil’s lone individual Olympic medal, and she also picked up two relay medals at those Games.
The follow-up performance in Paris left Mac Neil in the unlucky fourth-place position on four occasions. At one point in the 100 fly final, the defending champion looked to be in second place, but she could not muster her old closing speed as she finished behind Huske, Gretchen Walsh and Zhang. Canada finished two-and-a-half seconds out of contention in the 400 free relay, but in the 400 medley relay, Mac Neil actually put Canada into second place following the butterfly leg, only for star sprinters anchoring for Australia and China to pass McIntosh on the anchor leg.
Maggie Mac Neil at the 2024 Canadian Swimming Trials — Photo Courtesy: Swimming Canada/Daniel Harrison
That was the last swim of Mac Neil’s career, with the 24-year-old announcing her retirement last week. Of course, it’s the Olympic gold which Mac Neil will be best-remembered for, but calling her a one-hit wonder would be a huge understatement, given the scope of her accomplishments during a four-year run from 2019 to 2023.
Who ended the long run of Sarah Sjostrom in the 100 fly? That would be Mac Neil, who pulled off the upset of the meet at the 2019 World Championships. At that point, Sjostrom owned the 11 fastest times ever in the event, with a world record of 55.48 a half-second quicker than anyone else in history. She had won three consecutive world titles along with the 2016 Olympic gold. And Mac Neil, in her first major international competition following her freshman season at the University of Michigan, turned in fifth place in the final, some eight tenths off the pace.
But Mac Neil’s underwater dolphin kicks, on the way to becoming a feared weapon in the sport, put her alongside Sjostrom, and she finished in 29.06, then the quickest second-half split ever, to pull into the lead. She clocked 55.83 that day, at that point making her the second-fastest woman ever. Her rise in the event is best described as meteoric, with Mac Neil having never broken 58 entering the year and having never been under 57 prior to her electric swims in front of a global audience in Gwangju.
Then there was Mac Neil’s remarkable college career, with four undergraduate years with the Wolverines followed by one season reuniting with former Michigan associate head coach Rick Bishop at LSU. Her 2020 championship season was wiped out because of COVID-19, but one year later, months prior to her Olympic debut, Mac Neil was the individual star of the 2021 NCAA Championships as she and Virginia sophomore Kate Douglass engaged in three sprint duals.
Douglass took round one, edging Mac Neil in the 50 free by four hundredths, 21.13 to 21.17, but Mac Neil fired back in an epic 100 fly performance one day later, blasting the field to become the first woman ever under 49 with her time of 48.89. On the meet’s final day, she edged Douglass in the rubber match, coming from behind to win the 100 free in 46.02.
The Olympics came and went with Mac Neil winning three gold medals, and months later, she unleashed another star performance on the global stage at the Short Course World Championships in Abu Dhabi. Gold in the 100 fly, not a huge shocker, but gold and a world record in the 50 back? Mac Neil indeed accomplished that, with those stellar underwater kicks off both walls giving her the edge to lead a Canadian 1-2 finish with Masse. Mac Neil also ended up with two relay golds and a silver at that meet.
Twelve months later in Melbourne, same story. 2022 had been an up-and-down year for Mac Neil, with an injury-plagued NCAA Championships, her last with Michigan, followed by strong relay swims at the long course World Championships but no individual races. She won 100 fly gold at the Commonwealth Games and then returned to the Short Course World Championships for another stunning meet. She lowered her 50 back world record again and tied Huske for gold in the 50 fly, and then she crushed the world record in the short course 100 fly by a half-second, finishing in 54.05 to win what turned out to be her final global-level gold.
Maggie Mac Neil as an LSU Tiger — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
After that second Short Course Worlds star performance, Mac Neil’s lone year as an LSU Tiger allowed her to leave college swimming as the fastest swimmer. By the 2023 NCAA Championships in Knoxville, Tenn., Virginia’s Gretchen Walsh was well on her way to becoming college swimming’s all-time sprint star, but Mac Neil would hand her one dramatic setback. Mac Neil took the 2023 national title in the 50 free, beating Walsh by six hundredths while swimming a time of 20.79 that was the quickest ever. A day later, Mac Neil annihilated her previous all-time record in the 100 fly from two years earlier, although 48.51 was only good enough for second on this occasion as Douglass swam even quicker at 48.46.
No, Mac Neil’s career did not finish the flourish she would have wanted. She would never again top a full-strength international field in her signature event, with a silver in the 100 fly at the 2023 World Championships preceding her fourth-place result in Paris. She did win seven medals, including three individual gold, at the Pan American Games in late 2023, although without any electric times and without much top-notch competition present. She is ending her career at a much earlier age than most of her contemporaries, who seem poised to swim into their late 20s or beyond.
But let’s not forget about how good Mac Neil was at her peek: beating Sjostrom at the height of her 100 fly success in 2019, the barriers broken during her college career, the multi-medal performances at Short Course Worlds giving a glimpse at her abilities in that format.
Moving forward, a recollection of swimming history could overshadow Mac Neil aside from her golden swim in Tokyo. That’s not because of any fault of her own, just the manner in which Douglass and Walsh re-wrote the college record books and McIntosh quickly emerged as an all-time great for Team Canada. But let’s not forget just how dominant Mac Neil was at her peak.