Olympic butterfly champion Maggie Mac Neil manages asthma en route to Paris

Heat and chlorine are not swimmer Maggie Mac Neil's friends.

The reigning Olympic champion in the women's 100-metre butterfly has navigated both since the Canadian was diagnosed with sports-induced asthma as a teenager.

Mac Neil's strategies will be put to the test again at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, where the athletes' village won't have air conditioning and where temperatures can soar to over 40 C in summer.

"I know there's going to be no AC in the village in Paris as of right now, so just trying to manage it," said the 23-year-old from London, Ont. "Preparing for the worst and hoping for the best."

Mac Neil can't avoid chlorine in her sport because she's in the pool 20 hours per week.

Training at Louisiana State in Baton Rouge, where Mac Neil says the pool is the one facility on campus that doesn't have air conditioning, is also an exercise in asthma management.

"I do have to be really diligent with taking my medications, puffers and inhalers," the swimmer said. "Some days are worse than others. Living in southern Louisiana now, it gets pretty humid, hot and muggy, especially in the summer.

"My coach, I've had him for years, so he knows what I can and cannot take, or if I need to get out and get my inhaler or just modify my practice.

"Even if I'm not feeling 100 per cent or I'm coughing up a lung, it's just trying to do the best I can in that moment."

WATCH | Mac Neil takes 100m medley relay at Pan Am Games:

A teenage Mac Neil gravitated to longer distances such as the 200-metre butterfly and 400 individual medley.

She was struggling to breathe, however, in 2017. It came to a head at a World Cup in Singapore in that city's hot and humid climate.

"It was an indoor pool, but it had vents and an open wall to