RIO DE JANEIRO — A bleary-eyed Penny Oleksiak looked like a 16-year-old reporting to the breakfast table at an ungodly hour Sunday, as she traipsed into an 11 a.m. news conference to reveal Canada’s flag bearer for the closing ceremony.
She mumbled thanks to everyone from her friends to her family to Swimming Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee. She said she is honoured to lead Canadian athletes, who “worked so hard to medal and make finals and race and just do whatever they do best.”
With her four medals in Rio, Oleksiak became Canada’s most decorated Olympian at a single Summer Games. But at heart, she’s just a normal kid longing to return home from what amounts to an eventful summer vacation capped by carrying the flag into Maracana Stadium.
On her immediate radar: driving lessons and plenty of time hanging out at Tim Hortons with her besties back in Toronto.
“Penny, what have you been doing for the last week?” a reporter asked of her time in Rio since the swimming competition ended.
“Um, I’ve been sleeping and eating a lot of junk food — a lot of McDonald’s,” she said. “I’ve just been trying to catch up with all my friends that I haven’t talked to yet. I saw my family. It’s been pretty fun this last week just to chill out and everything.”
By chilling, she means hammering away on her smartphone. She arrived in Rio with roughly 2,500 Twitter followers. That number had ballooned to 46,900 as of Sunday morning.
“I wouldn’t say a lot has changed,” she said of her life on social media. “I’m still posting the same kind of stuff I usually post, letting people see inside the world of Penny.”
That world includes four medals tucked inside her winter socks: gold (100-metre freestyle), silver (100-metre butterfly) and two bronze (4×100 and 4×200 relays).
On her four trips to the Olympic podium, Oleksiak showed little in the way of emotion. She broke down in tears, however, later in the Games when Toronto rapper Drake gave her a shout out on Instagram.
She’s 16, remember. Only 16.
“I always listen to Drake before races,” she said. “All his songs are pump-up songs for me. It’s pretty awesome to have a Canadian icon message you. I don’t know. When he posted the picture on Instagram of me, I was freaking out with everyone. Everyone was sending me messages, because he’s just like so big in Toronto.”
In her spare time, Oleksiak likes to return the favour and chat with her new followers via social media.
“I’ve gotten a few messages from people,” she said. “Getting to speak to fans and everything who freak out when you message them back, it’s kind of weird for me. I freak out when I get a message from Drake, and that’s what it’s like for them, which is hard to imagine. But it’s been pretty great.”
Given her accomplishments, Canada’s flag bearer could leave Rio with a big head, but she swears her mom, dad and siblings won’t let that happen.
Her older brother Jamie is an NHL defenceman, and the family made a point of reminding him always that he’s still just Jamie to them. The same goes for Penny — or Penelope as her mother calls her.
“My family, they show me no mercy,” she said. “They’re just keeping everything the same. It’s pretty awesome to know they’re there for me. I think going through everything with my brother making the Dallas Stars and everything, I think we’ve kind of gone through this already,
“My whole family knows what they’re doing with this. I’m just trying to keep all my close friends as close as I can get them.”