Canada's Kylie Masse, of Lasalle, Ont., competes during the 100m women's backstroke final at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Tuesday, July 30, 2024.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
The first time Kylie Masse tried swimming, she wasn’t even supposed to be in the pool.
Her older brother was taking lessons and as young Kylie sat on her mom’s lap, she kept trying to reach for the water.
Cindy Masse figured as soon as Kylie got wet, she’d want no part of it.
“So I said, I’ll pay for this lesson, just let her go in?” Cindy recalls. “Then she went in and just took to the water.”
Twenty-eight years later, Masse is now a fixture in Canadian swimming, a captain of the national team, and one of the people responsible for turning the program around. Since the 2016 Summer Games, there hasn’t been an Olympic pool without her.
Nor was there on Tuesday night. In Paris, Masse returned to the race she’s been elite at for the past two Olympics, the 100-metre backstroke. But in a field that has gotten progressively faster and more competitive since she won her first medal in Rio in 2016, Masse finished just off the podium. Her time of 58.29 seconds left her in fourth.
“Obviously, fourth stings a little bit, but I just wanted to come and put together the best race that I possibly could and to really just try to enjoy the moment,” Masse said. “I’m happy to just be here still and be competing at this level.”
Australian Kaylee McKeown won the gold (57.33) while American Regan Smith took silver (57.66) and Katherine Berkoff of the United States claimed bronze (57.98).
Canadian Ingrid Wilm placed sixth in a time of 59.25.
Masse started the race with blistering speed in the first 50 metres, and was tied for first place at the turn, but couldn’t hold on in the back half of the race.
Though she hasn’t yet started talking about her legacy in Canadian swimming, her teammates are more than happy to take on that responsibility.
“When I was growing up, it was Kylie. Kylie’s been there year, after year, after year,” Wilm said.
“I think she’s an incredible, incredible swimmer and I really wish she still got the same respect and, just, admiration that she really genuinely deserves. She is a fantastic person and athlete.”
For Masse, it was the first of two attempts at a backstroke medal in Paris, with the 200-metre race coming later this week.
Masse has won four Olympic medals, including two in the 100-metre backstroke, where she took silver in Tokyo three years ago, and bronze at the 2016 Rio Summer Games.
She also won silver in the 200-metre backstroke in Tokyo, and another medal as part of the bronze-medal-winning 4x100-metre-medley relay team.
But making the podium in the same race at three consecutive Olympics is a tall order, even for Masse, who has been among the world’s most elite performers for years, leading to the nickname her teammates have given her: the Queen of Consistency.
It’s something Masse said she’s proud of, as well as her impact on the team, which she hopes is what she leaves behind, though she’s not quite ready to declare this her last year in the sport.
“The backstroke field has always been quite competitive and deep since I have been in it on the international stage, so I feel like there was always someone right there knocking on the door, if not in front of me,” Masse said.
“So I always knew that it was never going to be slower, it was always going to continue to get faster and faster.”
Her road to Olympic stardom was a slower grind than for some of her younger teammates, such as Penny Oleksiak, who burst upon the swimming scene in Rio with four medals at the age of 16, and Summer McIntosh, who has won two medals so far in Paris, at the age of 17.
Masse was 16 when she tried to qualify for her first Olympics in 2012, but finished well back of the cut, in 99th place.
Three years later, having bounded up the Canadian rankings at the age of 19, she narrowly missed qualifying for the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto. At that event, she watched from the stands with her family.
Rather than go the NCAA route as many of Canada’s best swimmers do, such as Josh Liendo (University of Florida) and Maggie Mac Neil (Michigan and LSU), Masse stayed close to home and began training at the University of Toronto. It was there where she began working with coaches Linda Keifer and Byron MacDonald, and began to emerge as a premier backstroker. By the 2016 Olympics she had won her first medal, and didn’t look back. She added two world championships in 2017 and 2019.
Masse has since moved to Spain to train with former Canadian coach Ben Titley, and came into these Olympics ranked slightly higher in the 200-metre backstroke than in the 100-metre. She had the fourth-fastest Olympic qualifying time in the 100-metre event, and the third-fastest qualifying time in the 200-metre race.
That event will be raced on Friday, giving Masse another shot at the podium.
She said she may try to slow her race down, something she suspects could have hurt on Tuesday.
“Sometimes when I rush my stroke, it’s actually a bit worse. So maybe settling into a bit of a slower stroke rate will benefit me,” Masse said.
“I’m just looking forward to the 200 and to just, again, be racing at the Olympics on an international stage. It’s such an amazing atmosphere.”
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