Canadian Olympic champion Penny Oleksiak has joined the pro group at Mission Viejo with an eye on Paris 2024.
Oleksiak, who has been primarily based out of Swimming Canada’s High Performance Centre in Toronto in recent years, joins the squad headed up by coach Jeff Julian, who announced the launch of the new pro team in January 2022.
Julian told SwimSwam that Oleksiak has aligned with the squad on a long-term basis with the plan of training there in the lead-up to the 2024 Canadian Olympic Trials and ultimately the Paris Games.
The Mission Viejo pro group, based out of the MVN 360 Performance Centre, also features the likes of American world champion Justin Ress, multi-time short course world champion Trenton Julian, and several members of the Puerto Rican National Team.
Recent social media posts also indicate Kayla Sanchez and Sean Grieshop have joined the squad.
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Oleksiak has only competed once in 2023 after undergoing surgery on a torn meniscus just over one year ago.
The 23-year-old was named to the Canadian World Championship team earlier this year despite missing the selection meet as she continued to rehab her injury, and after making a return to racing at the Barcelona leg of the Mare Nostrum Tour in May, she pulled the plug on racing at Worlds.
At the time, Oleksiak was still training out of the HPC in Toronto under coach Ryan Mallette, though the center has gradually lost a lot of its top names following the departure of head coach Ben Titley last year.
Oleksiak is the latest to find a new base with Sanchez, Kylie Masse, Yuri Kisil, Sydney Pickrem, NCAA swimmers Taylor Ruck and Josh Liendo and U SPORTS athlete Rebecca Smith among the others who have spent time at HPC – Ontario but are now training elsewhere.
At the age of 16, Oleksiak broke through in the women’s 100 freestyle at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, tying with American Simone Manuel for gold while winning a total of four medals, including an individual silver in the 100 fly.
Oleksiak won three more medals at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, including one individually in the 200 free (bronze), with her seven-medal haul making her the most decorated Canadian Olympian of all-time.
Oleksiak is also a nine-time World Championship (LC) medalist, though all of them come from relays. She has two individual 4th-place finishes at Worlds in the 100 fly (2017) and 200 free (2022), and has made four more appearances in individual finals throughout her career.
A return to form for Oleksiak would be a welcome addition for the Canadian team in Paris, as after she featured on all four of the relays in which Canada won a medal at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest, the nation only won one this past year in Fukuoka.
Yet another elite swimmer that does not want to train with Ryan Mallette. When is Swimming Canada going to make changes?
But didn’t Ryan M win coach of the year? People are alluding to him being not a great coach for swimmers not wanting to train with him. So what is the story with him?
What’s the deal? I thought he was a great award winning coach.
Mallette or Novak? Or both…?
Both
Ryan C – you are ridiculous. Why does it matter where a near – retiring swimmer trains? She’s lived somewhere her whole life. It’s fine if she wants to travel. it’s time for a new gen of swimmers anyway. Penny does not train either. Not a Ryan issue.
Get a grip. Penny is one of many that has left HPC Ontario due to the inept philosophies and coaching of Ryan Mallette. It’s all gone downhill since Ben Titley left and it is clear that the HPC is waste of money if there is not an elite coach running the program.
Time for swimming Canada to take a look at what is happening. Two HPC centres and so many funds streaming there in yet the Toronto one is bleeding swimmers and not sure how many are even training in Vancouver. It’s not working anymore and it’s a waste of funds that could be put into clubs. Swimming Canada needs change. Likely won’t come until after Paris now…
I don’t know enough about the hpc,s to intelligently comment on why they failed but I can see they failed.The amount of money down the drain is probably huge.Also the amount of money given to swimmers who seem to not want to represent Canada is another big loss of money.Seems like an independent overview from an independent point of view would be a great idea…………..or you could just rehire Ben Titley.
Titley isn’t moving his family out of Europe unless the offer is insane. There’s other people that they should be trying to recruit for that role.
Please look how Mallette’s swimmers performed at Canadian National Championship this year (few national champion) and Junior Worlds (a lot of finalist and medalists). Would you still call him a failure?
Sean Grieshop!
Looks like Allison Schmitt is swimming, per Hali Flickingers Instagram post.
Is Yuri Kisil still swimming?
Unconfirmed but someone said in the comments months ago that Kisil has retired.
Not that he owes us anything but would be great as a fan of Swimming Canada can have seasonal updates as to who is swimming, breaking, retired etc.
He might be training in Calgary outside of his clinics?
Would be great for the men’s 4*1 to get one more 47 mid/low split from him to add to Acevedo, Guslav, Liendo…
Have not seen him around for a long time. The last local meet he actually swam in was Cascade Speed Meet Nov 4-6 2023 and looks like World SC was his last meet.
Nov 4-6 2023? Does he have a time machine? (Yes, I know it’s just a typo and you mean 2022 but I couldn’t resist).
I’m sure she’ll do well training with Ray Looze.
Is Shubert coaching anyone now?
Isn’t he working with the Chinese team still?
Uh oh.