Toronto teenage swim phenom Penny Oleksiak was a easy choice for top female athlete in Canada for 2016.

 (Gabriel Rinaldi / Redux Pictures)

She achieved a number of firsts by a Canadian athlete.

Penny was the first swimmer from this country to win four Olympic medals and the first Canadian athlete to capture four at one Summer Games.

The 16-year-old put an exclamation mark on the year at the world short-course championship in Windsor earlier in December, winning a freestyle bronze medal and anchorning relay teams to a pair of golds and a silver.

Past winners of the Bobbie Rosenfeld award include golfer Brooke Henderson, tennis player Eugenie Bouchard, hockey player Hayley Wickenheiser and speedskaters Catriona Le May Doan and Cindy Klassen.

Rosenfeld, an Olympic medalist in trak and field and a multi-sport athlete, was named Canada’s best female athlete of the half-century in 1950.

Oleksiak received 61 of the 65 votes in the annual survey.

Last year’s winner Brooke Henderson got 2, Moguls skier Chloe Dufour-Lapointe and bobsled pilot Kaillie Humphries each received one.

Oleksiak is not the youngest woman to win the award.

Figure skater Tracey Wainman was 13 when she won it in 1981.