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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Dual Citizenship and the Olympics

An earlier post dealt with citizenship and Olympic competition. The National Post reports:
A Canadian has become America’s biggest hope to lead the nation’s swim team at the London Olympics.
On Monday, Missy Franklin, 17, a high school senior in Centennial, Colo., with dual citizenship, won the gold medal for the United States in the 100-metre backstroke.
The performance set a U.S. record of 58.33 seconds and bested Emily Seebohm of Australia (58.68 seconds) and Japan’s Aya Terakawa (58.83 seconds).
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Both Ms. Franklin’s parents were born in Canada. Her mother, D.A., is a physician from Halifax, and her father, Richard, a director at a clean-technology organization, is from St. Catharines, Ont.
Although the teenager, nicknamed Missy the Missile, chose to swim for the States, she said her “favourite place in the entire world” is Pictou, N.S., where she digs for clam and grills oysters while vacationing with her parents. Her first international meet was in Vancouver when she was 13.