Having been through 'hell and back,' Penny Oleksiak returns to pool with full focus on Olympics

Penny Oleksiak is still trying to wrap her mind around all of this — that after more than a decade of competing at the highest level in swimming, she's still at it. 

She certainly didn't imagine this for herself in the early days.

Despite what she calls being through "hell and back" — after all of the golden moments while becoming Canada's most decorated Olympian and crushing depression that marred some of her recent years as a swimmer — she's fallen in love with her sport all over again. 

"I'm at a really, really good place in my life and I'm happy with what I'm doing. I'm finally swimming because I want to swim. It's a choice I'm making to go to the pool. I don't feel like I have to be there or that I'm going to let people down if I don't go," she told CBC Sports.

Standing on the pool deck of the place she calls home, Oleksiak is back at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre this week competing in the inaugural Canadian Open. She'll compete in the 100- and 200-metre freestyle events, a chance to see where she's at with less than five weeks until Olympic trials. 

And also a chance to test her knee. During an interview with CBC Sports on Tuesday, Oleksiak revealed she had another surgery just three months ago after hurting it at the U.S. Open Swimming Championship in North Carolina in November.

"When I went to the Greensboro meet and I tore my knee at that meet I was so overwhelmed," Oleksiak said. "I had to get knee surgery three months ago."

Now though, Oleksiak says she's feeling healthy and happy with how her knee is recovering, and ready to compete back home at the Pan Am Sports Centre.

It's here that Oleksiak earned spots at her first and second Olympics. 

It's this place that Oleksiak has spent countless hours becoming