Kylie Masse is as stubborn as she is talented, which is why she has a medal from her third straight Olympics

The 28-year-old wills herself to bronze in the 200-metre backstroke.

PARIS—Maybe it was Kylie Masse’s last chance at this. She is 28, and though she is a stubborn and dedicated swimmer, Los Angeles 2028 is four years away.

She already had a bronze medal from the Rio Olympics, and those two silvers from Tokyo, and here she swam the 100-metre backstroke, her favourite event, and finished fourth. 

And then came the 200 backstroke, perhaps her final individual Olympic event, and Masse cemented her place in Canadian swimming history. She started in lane two, with the seventh-fastest qualifying time. She went out hellaciously fast, ahead of world-record pace in the first 100. At the turn, she was second. By the 150 mark, American Regan Smith and Aussie Katie McKeown were pulling away, and American Phoebe Bacon was seven one-hundreds of a second ahead of Masse, too.

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