Penny Oleksiak Set for First Meet in Six Months Against Solid Competition in Knoxville
For this week’s TYR Pro Swim Series in Knoxville, Tenn., Simone Manuel will receive plenty of attention as she competes for the first time since the Tokyo Olympics, but the swimmer with whom Manuel shared Olympic gold in the 100 freestyle in 2016 is also back after a decent-length break of her own. Unlike Manuel, Penny Oleksiak did race in 2022, and she won four relay medals (two silver and two bronze) at the World Championships before she skipped the Commonwealth Games and then suffered a knee injury that required a lengthy recovery.
Oleksiak chose to skip the Commonwealth Games for a brief reset. Given the compressed swimming calendar between the Tokyo and Paris Games, many major competitions were held back-to-back over the summer, and immediately before Worlds began, Oleksiak said, “After thinking long and hard about the additional commitment of Commonwealth Games, I have decided this is the best option long-term to prepare for the 2023 season and into Paris 2024.” Her coach, Ryan Mallette, and Swimming Canada High Performance Director John Atkinson expressed support for her plan.
Less expected was a meniscus tear that Oleksiak suffered in late August, which necessitated surgery (the first of her life). Oleksiak wrote in an Instagram post, “The recovery process is probably about to be the longest and most tentative one I’ve ever had to deal with, but I’m super excited to use this time to recover properly and get stronger in the process (and to keep y’all updated along the way).”
After going through that recovery and resuming training, Oleksiak is prepared to race again, and she will take on the 200 free, 50 butterfly and 100 free over three days in Knoxville. While she burst onto the scene in 2016 with that shared Olympic gold in the 100 free, the 200-meter race has actually been a stronger event for her in recent years, culminating with a bronze medal in Tokyo behind Ariarne Titmus and Siobhan Haughey. In 2022, Oleksiak was disqualified in the 200 free semifinals at Worlds for a false start.
The Knoxville race will be an early-season affair with the primary players at different stages of training, but the psych sheet shows a field also including 2016 Olympic champion Katie Ledecky and a quartet of quickly-improving American teenagers: Erin Gemmell, Claire Weinstein, Bella Sims and Katie Grimes.
In the 100 free, in which Oleksiak was fourth at the Tokyo Olympics (by seven hundredths) and at the 2022 World Championships (by six hundredths), top Americans Torri Huske and Claire Curzan are absent from the Pro Series meet, but Manuel, Abbey Weitzeil, Natalie Hinds and Erika Brown provide strong veteran competition.
She is entering her eighth year as a international-level contender, but Oleksiak is still only 22 years old, her 23rd birthday coming up in June. She has yet to win another individual gold medal at a major competition, but she is already Canada’s most decorated Olympian in any sport, summer or winter, and she has been the key figure in by far the most successful era of relays in Canadian swimming history. Quite the legacy already, and the buildup to another World Championships begins this week.
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