Canada’s Resilient Regan Rathwell Earns ‘Magical’ Olympic Chance
There’s no easy way around it, so you might as well just ask it. Regan Rathwell has spent the last five minutes presenting an atlas to her various injuries over a hellish last two years, and the question is begging its way out.
The broken foot that she swam through at Canadian Swimming Trials in 2022. The shoulder reconstruction that October, after the briefest introduction to collegiate swimming at the University of Tennessee. Surgery to shore up the other shoulder in 2023 that made it 13 months between competitions. The hospitalization for an illness and a mass removed from her neck last December. The concussion four weeks before Canadian Trials, because why the heck not?
Through it all, did Rathwell ever wonder if swimming was just over for her? Even at 20, even with two years of college left, even with a promising junior career that foretold senior promise if her body would just cooperate for more than a month or two, surely there had to be moments where she wondered why she was still pushing to do this?
The answer is so flat and matter of fact as to make you wonder why you hesitated.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to get back,” she said. “It was a big question.”
The native of Ashton, Ontario, answered emphatically at Canadian trials, her time of 2:09.38 in the women’s 200 backstroke qualifying for the Paris Olympics. That was the last of a troika of last-chance swims for Rathwell in a storybook spring, needing a last-minute cut even to get to Canadian Trials after her qualifying times had expired.
The larger question still stands, though – of how a swimmer, who went essentially two years between meets where she was fully healthy, could summon the self-belief to perform on the biggest stage of her career.
“It was magical,” Matt Kredich, her coach at Tennessee offered, struggling for the right words to encompass it all. “It is, this year, to me, the greatest individual story of the Olympics.”
A long road to ’well
Kredich isn’t just Rathwell’s coach. For a portion of time, he was her rehab partner.
When Kredich had his knee replaced, he found himself on training tables alongside Rathwell, after her first shoulder reconstruction. Every day, even if she couldn’t physically do much, Rathwell showed up, to be around teammates and chip away at the mountain of her rehab, one that got steeper midway through the process when the other shoulder required surgery.
Kredich has seen injuries snowball on swimmers before. He’s seen it extinguish their fire for the sport. Given what Rathwell dealt with, Kredich had his eyes peeled for warning signs. But he never saw them.
Regan Rathwell at Canadian Olympic Trials: Photo Courtesy: Michael P. Hall/Swimming Canada
“I just kept thinking, I’ve seen people that have sequences of injuries before that, at some point, they just say, I’m done,” he said. “And I’m 100 percent in support of that, because in order do this sport at a level where you’ve got to try to get back to healthy, it requires tremendous drive and excitement for the sport. And I never saw her lose that.”
There were myriad opportunities, up until literally days before Canadian trials, for Rathwell to throw in the towel. For three years, from Canadian Olympic Trials in 2021 to the voyage to Toronto this May, she only had a few meets that weren’t impacted by some kind of health issue.
That first Olympic Trials, where she went 2:11.72 at age 17 to finish fourth, hinted at her capabilities. But it took time to get back there. She fell short of her aspirations at Canadian Trials the next year by going 2:13.42, though she swam with a broken foot after dropping a weighted plate on it.
She persevered in the summer of 2022 to go a best time of 2:09.54 at Mare Nostrum in Barcelona. While that was her only voyage under 2:10, she accompanied it with a 2:11.28 at Canadian Junior and Senior Championships in July.
But it all came at a cost. Soon after swimming at Junior Pan Pacs and enrolling in Knoxville, the Greater Ottawa Kingfish Swim Club alum felt pain in her shoulder reach an unmanageable point, requiring surgical intervention. She suffered a circumferential labral tear with a fracture in the humeral head of her right shoulder, leading to a full reconstruction with reinforcement of the rotator cut. Her recovery taxed her left side, a SLAP tear (superior labrum anterior and posterior) forming in her left shoulder with a partial labrum tear.
The injuries were painful on their own. But interrupting obvious progress for a teen building into her best years was acutely devastating.
“I think I was in the best shape of my life going into these injuries,” Rathwell said. “I wasn’t really at a plateau. I was kind of on an up. My training was doing really well. I was really happy. And then the frustration hits where you’re watching and you’re trying not to compare yourself, but you’re like, ‘OK I could have been here, I could have been here, I could have been doing this.’ I think that makes it hard.”
The injuries meant she didn’t swim in competition from a dual meet in October 2022 to the Tennessee Invitational in November 2023. But Kredich saw her every day, drawing what strength she could from the team and trying to piece together one step after the next.
“I tried not to look far ahead,” she said. “I was taking things day by day. … When you take things day by day, it’s like, OK, maybe it won’t happen, and anything that happens moving forward is a bonus.
The Olympic adversity
Things would, however, get worse before they got better. Rathwell was hospitalized in the fall for internal bleeding. A mass was removed in her neck in December. Kredich is quick to point out that while both shoulders are repaired, that isn’t the same as swimming pain-free.
The mental and physical toll meant she swam just one exhibitioned event in Tennessee’s two January dual meets. Kredich and Rathwell’s main stroke coach, Ashley Jahn, decided not to subject her to SEC Championships, opting for two extra weeks of recovery before a home last-chance meet.
Lo and behold, Rathwell delivered a pair of NCAA cuts there, getting to Athens in both the 100 back and 200 back.
Rathwell’s NCAA performance illustrates it perfectly for Kredich. She had gone 53.08 at the last chance meet, then sped up to 52.03 to finish 29th in prelims. In the 200, seeded 19th and with a chance to make it back, she ended up dropping nearly two seconds to a 1:51-point … until she was disqualified for toes over the lip of the gutter on the start.
Whatever Kredich was bracing for when Rathwell returned to the Vols’ bench wasn’t what he got.
“She just never felt sorry for herself and she never felt down,” he said. “She walked by the team right afterwards and said, ‘just another step in the comeback.’”
Through it all, Rathwell reframed the weight of her adversity. With so much time away from the pool, any morsel of progress, however slight, wasn’t measured by how far away it was from her best but as if it was a new beginning. Being able to complete a drill for the first time in Rathwell’s swimming life 2.0 was an achievement, not to be diminished by a previously life that felt so distant.
“It was almost like, I got to start my career all over again,” she said. “I had been swimming for 12 years. And you kind of take it for granted when it moves along. But I got to do my first practice back, take my first stroke, do my first race again, go my first best time. That was mentally was where I thrived most.”
The final blow
Rathwell’s last pre-Trials hurdle would test that resilience. She felt ready for Canadian Trials in May at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre … only it had been so long since she’d swum long-course meters that her qualifying cuts from the summer of 2022 had expired. So she and Jahn scrambled to San Antonio for the Pro Swim Series event, where she managed a finals time of 2:12.08 in the 200 back, well under the 2:19 required to reach Trials. The celebration lasted about a day until – how do you not see this coming yet? – after prelims of the 100 back, while getting out of the pool, she tugged on a loose backstroke wedge that came down and bonked her on the head.
After being a second slower in finals that night and reporting to Kredich that her head still hurt the next day, they determined it was a concussion, 29 days shy of the open of Olympic Trials, more than a week of was spent out of the water recuperating.
So piece it all together – the injuries, the surgeries, the illnesses, the reflex for a little self-protection – and you can figure out how modest of expectations Rathwell packed in her bags for Toronto.
“In my mind, I was just going to swim for the love of the sport,” she said. “I was really excited to be back on home soil. I hadn’t done that in two years at that point. So I had no expectations. I just wanted to have some fun.”
And it’s why, when minutes after touching the wall in second place to Kylie Masse in the 200 backstroke, with a time of 2:09.38 that was a tidy 1.01 under the Olympic A cut, Rathwell allowed a pregnant pause that spoke volumes when the CBC broadcast asked her what went into her preparation.
“Umm,” Rathwell allowed, a couple of glances around the deck groping for the right words, “it’s kind of been an up and down path.”
The Olympic village it takes
This isn’t Rathwell’s story. Or at least, she cautions, it isn’t hers alone.
Regan Rathwell at Canadian Olympic Trials: Photo Courtesy: Michael P. Hall/Swimming Canada
She’s the one in the water, sure. But to get there took a passel of people – doctors, nurses, coaches, physical therapists, friends, teammates, wearing maple leaves or big orange – to get her to Paris.
It’s why Rathwell’s reaction to her swim in Toronto turns instantly outward.
“I had conversations with coaches and trainers of, do you think it’ll even be realistic that I’ll get back to where I was,” Rathwell said. “I think the biggest satisfaction for me making the team was not just making it for myself but really, when they say it takes a team, it really does. I had so much support. I probably wouldn’t have made it even a month without the support that I’ve had.
“So for me, it was rewarding because all the work that everybody put into me, I felt that I could show my appreciation by sharing that result with them.”
It’s why, Kredich said, Rathwell’s authoritative swim sent a wave of enthusiasm through the pool in Knoxville.
“We had people on our team talking about that for days afterwards, because it’s just so inspiring,” he said. “I truly haven’t seen anybody come back that quickly to such a high level, after not looking like they were making any progress, after multiple setbacks. It’s almost unbelievable.”
Community takes many forms for Rathwell, and there’s overlap between them. She has plenty of fellow Canadians in Knoxville, including Paris Olympian Brooklyn Douthwright and Tokyo qualifier Tessa Cieplucha. The Lady Vols are adding Olympian Ella Jansen next year. She’s used to hearing people say, “wow, I couldn’t have done it if I was in your shoes,” and her first instinct is to wonder if they lack the support system that she had.
Kredich sees it manifest in Rathwell’s particular positivity.
“She’s fierce and relentless and focused,” Kredich said. “She doesn’t walk around exuding positivity, but she always has a little smile on her face. She looks like she’s in control. I think she has this tremendous belief in herself and not a lot of doubt. … I didn’t ever feel, and I don’t think any of our other coaches did, like I had to spend time pulling her off a ledge and saying, it’s OK, you’re going to be fine. When all of these health issues happen, she was pretty devastated, but she was never despondent.”
Rathwell’s confidence is not performative, not to be floodlighted into the world for all to see, but instead reserved to the select few that mattered most. selectively broadcasted to those that mattered most to her and reserved as an internal signal to foster her strength. It’s the stuff that magical dreams are made of.
“I’ve dreamed about going to the Olympics since I was a little kid,” she said. “Being surrounded by such a great team and incredible people, incredible athletes, and I’m just working to be a little bit better in the pool and putting my best effort forward.”
