Once A Hotbed, Canada’s Top Swimmers Have Made A Mass Exodus Out of the Country

Canadian swimming has seen a mass exodus of its top athletes from training at Swimming Canada’s High Performance Centres—and domestically in general—over the last 20 months.

After HPC – Ontario head coach Ben Titley was let go in March 2022, we have slowly but surely seen the best Canadian swimmers head stateside (or overseas) to train after previously being situated up north.

HPC – Ontario previously served as the longtime training base for top-tier Canadian swimmers Penny Oleksiak, Taylor Ruck, Kayla Sanchez and Rebecca Smith, and in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the majority of the country’s best were training out of the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre under Titley’s watch.

That list included:

• Josh Liendo
• Yuri Kisil
• Finlay Knox
• Maggie MacNeil (briefly in final stages pre-Olympics)
• Summer McIntosh
• Penny Oleksiak
• Sydney Pickrem
• Kayla Sanchez
• Kylie Masse
• Taylor Ruck
• Rebecca Smith

At the Tokyo Games, Canada won six medals, but due to a pair of relay bronzes, a combined total of 15 medals were won by swimmers, all of whom spent time at HPC – Ontario.

• Penny Oleksiak – 3 medals (200 FR, 4×100 FR, 4×100 MR)
• Kylie Masse – 3 medals (100 BK, 200 BK, 4×100 MR)
• Maggie MacNeil – 3 medals (100 FLY, 4×100 FR, 4×100 MR)
• Kayla Sanchez – 2 medals (4×100 FR, 4×100 MR)
• Taylor Ruck – 2 medals (4×100 FR, 4×100 MR)
• Rebecca Smith – 1 medal (4×100 FR)
• Sydney Pickrem – 1 medal (4×100 MR)

We’ve since seen the athletes depart for other training bases located outside of the country. Some returned (or went to) the NCAA, some followed Titley to Spain, and others found a new home at a pro group stateside.

• Maggie MacNeil returned to the University of Michigan for her senior year in the NCAA, and after transferring to LSU for her fifth year of college eligibility, is still training in Baton Rouge.
• Taylor Ruck returned to Stanford University in the NCAA, and though she isn’t using her final season of eligibility this semester, does not appear to be training in Canada. Her presence at the World Cup in Berlin indicates she might be back with Titley.
• Kylie Masse did follow Titley to Spain, where a pro group has formed at the National Training Center in Sant Cugat.
• Penny Oleksiak did remain at the HPC for a time while rehabbing from injury, but has since made the move to California, joining the Mission Viejo pro group.
• Also training in Mission Viejo is Kayla Sanchez, who started the process of changing her sporting citizenship to represent the Philippines last summer.
• Sydney Pickrem returned to her alma mater, Texas A&M, to train after the Tokyo Olympics, having joined HPC – Ontario in the lead-up to the Games in November 2020.
• Summer McIntosh made the full-time move to the Sarasota Sharks in Florida just over one year ago.
• Josh Liendo began his freshman year at the University of Florida in the fall of 2022, and has been training in Gainesville for the last 14 months.

Still In Canada:

• Yuri Kisil left HPC – Ontario to rejoin the Cascade Swim Club in Calgary last year.
• Rebecca Smith started school at the University of Calgary in the fall of 2021 after the Tokyo Games.
• Finlay Knox is still training out of a High Performance Centre, but has shifted from the Ontario base in Toronto the Vancouver hub led by coach Scott Talbot.

Fukuoka World Championship team members Ella Jansen, Javier Acevedo and Sophie Angus remain at HPC – Ontario, but the vast majority of world-class swimmers who once trained there have departed.

Angus won a medal as a member of the women’s 400 medley relay in Fukuoka, but if we’re looking solely at individual events, all of Canada’s medals at the 2023 World Championships came from swimmers who train outside of the country.

Canada picked up individual medals from U.S.-based swimmers McIntosh, Liendo and MacNeil in Fukuoka.

The only other nation to win multiple individual medals without having any come from a domestically-trained swimmer is Tunisia, which had all three of its medals come from Ahmed Hafnaoui who is now based out of Indiana University.

2023 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

France is sitting at 50 percent due to half of their medals coming from Leon Marchand, who left what would’ve been a pressure-packed training base to join Arizona State University, where he’s done OK for himself so far.

For Great Britain, it’s worth noting that their lone medalist who doesn’t train domestically is Ben Proud, who is based out of Turkey but swims under a British coach, James Gibson.

Hungary also wouldn’t be sitting at zero percent if Kristof Milak was competing in Fukuoka—their lone medal came from Hubert Kos, who only recently left the country to join Marchand at ASU.

These numbers are somewhat staggering, and display the fact that national federations are stepping up and providing funding for training centers with elite coaching to attract swimmers to remain in-country.

Swimming Canada had that framework firmly in place, and it was thriving, but ever since Titley’s departure, his swimmers have made a mass exodus. Canada can now be seen as more or less an age group country, where swimmers are developed and then ultimately leave, especially with no proven path to success.

And although it’s not necessarily solely a direct result of these changes, Canada was once a near lock to medal in at least two (and maybe all three) women’s relays, and probably the mixed medley, at the Paris Olympics, but now that’s far from the case due to how disjoined their elite swimmers are after so many years in sync.