Canada’s Oleksiak hopes to return for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris

TORONTO –

Penny Oleksiak still hopes to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The seven-time Olympic medalist withdrew from the world swimming championships on June 1 due to injury. She said she was initially sidelined after undergoing knee surgery to repair a torn meniscus in her knee, but then suffered a compensatory injury to her shoulder.

It was the neurological problem with her shoulder that forced her to miss the world championships after she took part in the Barcelona leg of the Mare Nostrum tour in May.

“It’s definitely been a year of learning and it’s been fun learning about my body and learning how to heal it faster and stuff,” Oleksiak said Wednesday. “I’m just now getting over that injury and slowly getting back to training and then leading up to 2024.”

Oleksiak made the remarks at Collision, a tech conference in downtown Toronto, while speaking on stage at Exhibition Place to hundreds of spectators.

The 22-year-old swimmer said that because she had never been injured before, she didn’t fully understand the rehabilitation process after her surgery. That included nine pool sessions a week, as well as Pilates and strength training once she was free from her knee surgery.

“I think growing up I was always so afraid of missing swimming competitions and just missing those things,” said Oleksiak. “I thought you had to go to everyone and at some point it kind of wore me out.

“I went through a pretty rough period where I just felt a lot of pressure, but I think it’s only in the last year that I’ve really learned that I’m a person outside of swimming.”

She said being physically sidelined has meant exploring her interests outside of athletics and it has resulted in her becoming a more all-round person.

“I’ve been able to be in so many incredible rooms and talk to so many incredible people and experience so many things that I’ve really learned that I have an insane amount of interests outside of swimming,” said Oleksiak. “But also, just the resilience and strength it takes to bounce back from injury and just the patience is insane.

“I didn’t know it took you so much patience to get there,” she added with a laugh.

Oleksiak won four medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics and another three at the 2021 Tokyo Games.

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on June 28, 2023.