RUCK Taylor

General
RETURN TO CANADA
For the 2019/20 academic year she put her studies at Stanford University in the United States of America on hold [redshirt] to focus on training for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. She spent the early part of 2020 in Arizona during the COVID-19 quarantine, before returning to Canada in the summer to train at the Olympic training facility in Toronto, Ontario. By October 2020, she was still in Canada and resumed her studies at Stanford University remotely for the 2020/21 academic year. "The remote aspect isn't that hard but just with Ben [Titley, her coach], the schedule is he assumes you devote all your time to swimming. But now I have less time. Homework takes up all of my time. I am just starting to figure it out, but it is a good dynamic. I have been taking a few classes to figure it [her professional career path] out. I feel like nursing is pretty cool. There is a lot of time investment there, so I am not sure how that is going to work with swimming. I will see how these classes go." She said her training in 2020 focused on technique work. "We are focused on hand technique in backstroke, not entering too close to the middle. I feel like I need to catch my hold on the water better. I am trying to get that back in both backstroke and freestyle." (swimmingworldmagazine.com, 11 Oct 2020; CBC Sports YouTube channel 18 Jul 2019; swimswam.com, 26 Aug 2019)

DEALING WITH PRESSURE
In 2018 she said that with help from coach Ben Titley she has learned to not let media attention and pressure affect her performance. "I think when I was younger, I felt more expectations just because I didn't really know how to handle it. I think Ben's main point of advice is just keep doing what you're doing and just not let it go over your head. I think that really helps me just focus on practising each day and just keeping my normal routine. If I just stay grounded and keep doing what I'm doing, then I'll be able to achieve more success." (CBC Sports YouTube channel 10 Aug 2018)

RIO SELECTION
In April 2016 she fought through bronchitis to swim six events at the 2016 Canadian Olympic Trials. She finished high enough [second] but not fast enough in the 400m freestyle to automatically make the Olympic team under Swimming Canada's qualifying rules. In the 200m freestyle, she was fast enough but not high enough [fifth]. However, Swimming Canada considers "unforeseen circumstances", such as illness, during the trials for discretionary nomination and she was subsequently named in the Canadian team for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. "At the Olympics, it was my first taste of huge international competition, and I was just amazed. I was stupefied, literally. I didn't even know what to do. In Rio I was so nervous the whole time. I was so young and I was just looking around dazed." (olympicchannel.com, 22 Jul 2019; azcentral.com, 14 Jun 2016)

GROWING UP IN THE UNITED STATES
She was born in Canada but grew up in Arizona in the United States of America, where her family moved when she was 10 months old. When her family would visit her grandparents in Kelowna, BC, Canada, she and her brother trained with the AquaJets, the same team her mother swam for as a teenager. "I've grown up here [in the United States of America] my whole life so I feel American, but I definitely owe my heritage to Canada. I didn't really have a choice, but [if I did] I'd still represent Canada." (olympic.ca, 12 Apr 2016)

When she and teammate Penny Oleksiak won bronze as part of the Canadian women's 4x100m freestyle relay team at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, they became the first athletes born in the 21st century to win an Olympic medal for any nation. (SportsDeskOnline, 12 May 2021)