Kelsey Wog proves world-class success can start at home

When Kelsey Wog [BSc(Agr)/22, MSc/26] chose the University of Manitoba, she was choosing more than a school. She was choosing home.

By the time she was deciding where to study and swim, Wog had options well beyond Manitoba. But she was already training with the Bisons varsity coach, building momentum and surrounded by the support system that had helped shape her.

“I could have gone to any NCAA school that I wanted to,” Wog says. “But I really valued staying in Canada and being really close to home.”

As a Bison, Wog became one of the most decorated swimmers in U SPORTS, earning 16 individual national gold medals, setting multiple U SPORTS and Bisons records and being named U SPORTS Female Athlete of the Year. She also represented Canada at the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympic Games and holds the Canadian record in the 100-metre breaststroke.

Wog says building that kind of career at UM was never the goal. Her focus was on earning a place on Canada’s national team and continuing to improve.

“It just kind of happened throughout the process,” she says. “It’s always really nice to represent my home university and to be able to have done what I did. I hope that it inspires others to follow in my footsteps and repeat what I did or even top it.”

Her Olympic career was shaped by two very different moments. Making her first Olympic team came after the uncertainty and isolation of the pandemic, when trials were delayed and training looked nothing like usual.

“I spent a good chunk of a year training all by myself with nobody around me,” Wog says. “Getting to that moment and actually making the Olympic team for the very first time represented a culmination of a huge effort put together by many, many people.”

In Paris, the experience was different. Her family was in the stands, and Wog knew it would be her final competition.

“Being in Paris and having my family there in the stands supporting me, knowing that it was going to be the last competition that I would ever do, meant a lot to me,” she says.

At UM, Wog balanced elite swimming with demanding academic work in Plant Biotechnology and Microbiology. She earned Academic All-Canadian standing and the Governor General’s Top 8 Academic All-Canadian Award, while completing research connected to agriculture.

Her master’s research examined the genetics of fusarium, a fungus that affects wheat and barley crops in Canada, and how it adapts to antifungal treatments.

The Distinguished Alumni Award has given Wog a chance to reflect on what persistence has meant across her career.

“Growing up, I never felt like I was ever top at anything,” Wog says. “I was always in the top group, but I was never the top at anything.”

For Wog, the recognition is about staying with something long enough to see what is possible.

“If you maintain being persistent and you work towards something, when things get tough, you’ll eventually succeed,” she says. “I think this just means a lot in terms of my persistence and sticking to something until the job is done.”