Swimmer Summer McIntosh is a cool frog. Next to the rim of the bath, she often exudes a calm cheerfulness. But last Wednesday, after McIntosh during Canadian selection games swam a world record in the 400-meter freestyle, she broke down in tears. “I don’t cry often,” she told sports journalist Devin Heroux of Canada CDC News“but this world record…”
“I saw what it meant to her,” Heroux looks back from Toronto. “And she really didn’t expect it to happen now.”
Because McIntosh is only sixteen. Perhaps not the youngest swimmer ever to hold a world record – swimming legend Michael Phelps was fifteen when he set his first world record – but a very remarkable achievement nonetheless.
And then, four days later, McIntosh swam another world record. Now on the 400 meter individual medley. A race in which she only collapsed a bit in the backstroke, but then took it up a notch in the freestyle. “I have never seen anyone swim at a world record pace so relaxed,” observed a Canadian TV commentator.
A world record in both the 400-meter freestyle and the 400-meter individual medley: McIntosh is unique in that. Never before has a swimmer had the fastest times on those two numbers at the same time. And that at the age of sixteen. “You can really see the versatility of this young girl in that,” says Marcel Wouda, who works as a coach on the ‘medical medley project’, which should yield Dutch medals at the 2032 Olympic Games.
Swimming world records is “specialist work”, says Wouda, world champion in the 200-meter medley in 1998. There are few swimmers who can dominate on (many) different numbers – exceptions like Phelps aside. Wouda: “And for the 400m you have to be a very complete swimmer anyway. You have to master four strokes, do the turns properly, have speed and stamina.”
He expects McIntosh to give “an impulse” to the level of swimming in the 400-meter transition and the 400-meter free, in which, according to him, no Dutch and relatively few foreign top athletes are currently active.
Gold twice
Summer McIntosh, who grew up in Toronto, comes from a sporty family. Her mother, Jill Horstead, competed as a swimmer in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Her older sister Brooke is an figure skater.
McIntosh has been training in the United States for a few months now, with Sarasota Sharks in Florida. But she is still in the spotlight in Canada.
Since her two world records, the Summer fever has already broken out in full force, says sports journalist Heroux. It is rumored that she may become the most successful athlete in Canadian Olympic history.
“She is definitely a contender in Paris,” says Wouda. If she ends up there in the summer of 2024, for example in the 200-meter freestyle, then a Dutch swimmer like Marrit Steenbergen will have a formidable competitor. “They will meet each other. I am also very curious about that”, says Wouda.
She has already proven that McIntosh is already fully participating in swimming at her young age. At the World Long Course Championships in Budapest last July, she swam four medals, including gold in the 200-meter butterfly and 400-meter individual medley. At the Tokyo Summer Games in 2021, where she was allowed to go as a fourteen-year-old, she already took a good fourth place in the 400-meter freestyle.
McIntosh can go a long way with that. Swimmers are on average at their peak in their early twenties to 25 years old, says Wouda. At the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games, McIntosh will still be just 21 years old.
However, success is, of course, not guaranteed. Wouda: “She is at an age when it can be quite exciting. How does she deal with this? How is she supervised?” In addition, she is a teenager, who is still developing physically. “How is that going?” Wouda wonders.
Once per generation
Heroux, who has been following McIntosh for a number of years, saw that she was still largely able to swim in the lee during the Games in Tokyo. “If you finish fourth, you are not on the podium. But you can see up close what you have to do to win a medal.”
McIntosh has since grown far out of that relative anonymity. Heroux is also curious how she will develop over the next year and a half – until ‘Paris’. But that McIntosh is a talent that „once in a generation”, he dares to say.
Heroux recently visited McIntosh in Florida, where she lives and trains. He filmed her behind the wheel in the car, giggling as she practiced for her driver’s license. Her mother, who moved with her to the US, in the seat next to her.
And he filmed her during training. What struck him: “They try to let her really be a child there. She trains with people her own age. And she gets none special treatment, as may have happened in Canada. Outside the pool she is often quite reserved, but in the water I saw that she really had fun.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 6, 2023