Michelle Toro

Michelle Toro
Personal information
Birth name	Michelle Williams
National team	Canada
Born	January 2, 1991 (age 33); Pretoria, South Africa
Height	175 cm (5 ft 9 in)
Weight	67 kg (148 lb)
Spouse	Guillermo Toro (m. 2016)
Sport
Sport	Swimming
Strokes	Freestyle
Club	High Performance Centre - Ontario
Medal record
Women's swimming
Representing Canada
Olympic Games
Pan American Games
World Championships (SC)
Commonwealth Games

Michelle Toro (née Williams; born January 2, 1991) is a Canadian competition swimmer who specializes in the freestyle in the sprint distances.^[1] She won a gold medal in the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto in the 4 x 100 m freestyle and in the 4 x 100 m medley relay.^[2] She also won a bronze at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in the 4 x 100 m freestyle.

She competed as part of Canada's Olympic team for the 2016 Summer Olympics, commonly known as Rio 2016.^[3] Williams would help fellow Canadians Taylor Ruck, Chantal van Landeghem and Sandrine Mainville in the women's 4 x 100 m freestyle relay heats, with the team swimming the third fastest time. She then had to make way for teenage star Penelope Oleksiak in the final, where Oleksiak helped anchor the team to the bronze medal.^[4] In an interview after the event, Williams said "we've come a long way, this group of us. It's our medal and it's our medal for Canada, it's just so amazing."^[4]

Personal

Williams was born in Pretoria, South Africa and speaks fluent Afrikaans alongside English, she often goes back to South Africa to visit her family in Jeffreys Bay.^[2] On December 17, 2016, shortly after the Short Course World Swimming Championships, she married her childhood teammate Guillermo (Billy) Toro.^[5] They met when she was 12 and he was 14 at the North York Aquatic Club and started dating six years later.^[5]

On December 7, 2020, the couple welcomed their first child, Jacob Murray Toro.

Toro's third child, named Samuel, was born in April 2024.

References

^ ^a ^b "Michelle Williams (swimmer)". Swim Canada. Archived from the original on April 16, 2016. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Olympic team profile". Olympics Canada. Archived from the original on May 8, 2016. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
^ "Olympic Team Nominated for Rio 2016". Swimming Canada. Swimming Canada. April 10, 2016. Archived from the original on June 26, 2017. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
^ ^a ^b "Canada wins bronze in women's 4x100m freestyle relay". CBC Sports. August 7, 2016. Archived from the original on August 25, 2016. Retrieved August 8, 2016.
^ ^a ^b Heroux, Devin (December 11, 2016). "Canadian swimmer Michelle Williams finds her soulmate in the pool". CBC Sports. Archived from the original on December 17, 2016. Retrieved May 4, 2017.