The 20-year-old Olympian says successful summer was a turning point for his career: “I kind of took a step forward.”
He’s been setting age-group records since he was 13, put in an impressive Olympic showing in Tokyo at 18, and he’s the first Black Canadian swimmer to win a world championship gold medal —But it’s what he achieved over the summer that he says really changed his mindset and vaulted him from rising star to top-tier competitor.
“Racing the best in the world and being able to not just keep up but excel, at that high level, means I kind of took a step forward,” Liendo said in an interview just before“It was a big shift in my mentality … from me looking at it saying, you know, I’m going to try to make it into with these guys, to the point where I’m like: I’m going to try to beat these guys.”
“It feels good — more racing, more fun,” he said right after Saturday’s race. “It’s great to race those guys. It’s a fast field.”Liendo says that finally winning at the top world level in the summer changed how he mentally approaches racing. But he’s always been confident that he’d get there. In fact, “confident” and “positive” are the most common adjectives coaches use to describe him.
A decade later, Liendo made it to the Tokyo Olympics, competed in five events and came achingly close to that medal, finishing fourth in the 4x100-metre freestyle relay.