Maggie MacNeil closed a perfect year by completing the fabled butterfly “quadfecta” or “fourfecta” at the FINA short-course world championships, casually smashing the backstroke world record the day before. Adding another gold in her preferred 100m butterfly in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, the 21-year-old has now been crowned short-course world champion, long-course Olympic champion, short-course (yards) NCAA champion this year, and won the long-course world title in 2019. MacNeil, who became a household name after clinching gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games , also set a new 50m backstroke world record with 25.27, breaking Kira Toussaint’s 2020 swim by a staggering 33 milliseconds. It was MacNeil’s fourth gold of the week having won the first two with the Canadian team in the 4x100m freestyle relay and mixed 4x50m medley relay. This was MacNeil’s first short-course world championships, with her swims securing a position at the top of the meet’s FINA points tally. Who is Chinese-Canadian swimmer Maggie MacNeil? “So proud, honoured and relieved to cap my 2021 year with this quadfecta in my baby the 100 fly,” MacNeil wrote on Instagram, shouting out teammate Kylie Masse, whose silver medal-earning swim was just .02 seconds off the previous world record. “Such a historic meet with my fave girlies. Now it’s ‘beginning to look a lot like Christmas’. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Maggie Mac Neil OLY (@macnmagg) “Never in a million years did I think my first [word record] would be in a backstroke event. Such a special moment, and to do it with my role model and amazing friend Kylie Masse beside me was even more incredible.” MacNeil’s former coach Andrew Craven cited her unrivalled underwater kicking ability as the key to her latest success, with the shorter 25m pool giving her an extra push at the turn. “That’s Maggie’s trick. She takes those kicks with the absolute maximum power. It’s not her secret weapon any more but it’s her greatest weapon,” he told Global News. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Maggie Mac Neil OLY (@macnmagg) MacNeil was born in Jiujiang, China, and reportedly adopted by her Canadian parents at just a few months old. The London, Ontario native studies at the University of Michigan, where Hong Kong swimming star and fellow world championships gold medallist Siobhan Haughey also plies her trade.