Summer McIntosh, at 17, has everyone’s attention. Now she’s aiming for Olympic glory

Summer McIntosh, at 17, has everyone’s attention. Now she’s aiming for Olympic glory

Posted on December 30, 2023

Editor’s Note: This article is part of our “Origin Stories” series, focusing on athletes’ backstories and topics related to the Summer Olympics.

SARASOTA, Fla. — Summer McIntosh has also caught the attention of Billie Jean King.

On the evening of the women’s 400-meter freestyle final at the Toyota US Open in Greensboro, North Carolina, McIntosh, the Canadian swimming prodigy, stepped to the starting block. Next to her was American swimming legend Katie Ledecky.

It was the first meeting between McIntosh and Ledecky since the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, a clash between two generations of swimmers. Ledecky, 26, is considered the greatest swimmer of all time. McIntosh, 17, is a budding swimming sensation. Ledecky remains motivated to make further contributions to her accomplished career. The American has seven Olympic and 21 World gold medals. McIntosh’s career is just beginning.

The bell rang and the swimmers jumped into the pool. Ledecky took the early lead off the blocks. But at the first corner McIntosh was in front. He never lost command. At the 300-meter mark, McIntosh was a full length ahead of Ledecky. As McIntosh made his way through the final 50 meters, he touched the wall, setting a new championship record in the 400 meter freestyle. McIntosh and Ledecky exchanged brief compliments before exiting the pool. This time the Canadian won.

Five days later, King – the tennis icon and champion of gender equality – wrote a congratulatory note on social media to McIntosh.

“History was made at the pool this past weekend,” King said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Greetings Summer McIntosh.”

McIntosh is already a four-time world champion and has set two world records in 2023. She is charting a path to swimming greatness, just as Ledecky did as a teenager. Now, McIntosh’s expectations continue to dream with the 2024 Paris Olympics seven months away.

It’s 5:45 am in Sarasota, Florida. This is McIntosh’s wake-up call for his Tuesday morning workout. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are the days when McIntosh swims twice. There are several warning signs. On Mondays, McIntosh gets up at 4:15 a.m. local time.

“I’m a deep sleeper, so calming alarms will wake me up slowly and won’t scare me at 4:15,” McIntosh said.

McIntosh eats breakfast before heading to the Selby Aquatic Center, home of the Sarasota Sharks swimming team, which has developed swimmers at the state, national and international levels for more than 60 years. Known as the “shark tank,” this is where McIntosh trains under coach Brent Arckey. In this morning workout, McIntosh enters the pool for a warm-up before performing a series of freestyle workouts. Training is from 6:30 to 8:30. He then goes home for a nap before the afternoon training session.

Early wake-ups and intense training create a regimented schedule. As much as McIntosh appreciates the preparation, he admits that there are days when the motivation isn’t up to his standards.

“Motivation is not something you always have every single day,” McIntosh said. “It comes in waves. But I always have that discipline that no matter how I feel when I wake up, I go to the pool and do my best. … I keep moving forward, and it’s those moments where you have to stay disciplined because you have to remember your long-term goals and then you have to implement your short-term goals for that day.

This is how McIntosh prepares for Paris, and probably his next big fight with Ledecky.

For McIntosh, Ledecky is not just any competitor. She is the swimmer whose posters hung on the wall in McIntosh’s childhood bedroom in Etobicoke, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto.

McIntosh was five years old when Ledecky won her first Olympic gold at London 2012. Now, the two swim against each other in major races. What McIntosh attracted in Ledecky was more than just shared skills in long-distance swimming. That’s what McIntosh saw in Ledecky’s personality away from the pool.

“No matter what you achieve in any sport, they’re just people too,” McIntosh said. “He is simply a very down-to-earth person. Getting to know her on a more personal level made me realize that everyone is having a human experience. “She showed me another side of someone I always idolized growing up.”

McIntosh also admired another American, Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time. A few years ago, McIntosh watched Phelps’ record eight gold medal runs at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He also named one of his three cats “Mikey,” in honor of Phelps.

“He trusted the process and took it day by day,” McIntosh said of what he learned from Phelps. “Even when you lack motivation one day, you can still be disciplined and get the task done.”

McIntosh is part of a successful sports family. Her mother, Jill, was an Olympic swimmer at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Her sister, Brooke, is a pairs ice skater. It’s been a meteoric rise for Summer, who began swimming competitively at age 8. At 14, she was the youngest Canadian on the Tokyo 2020 team. In her first world championship appearance, McIntosh won gold in the 200-meter butterfly and 400-meter individual medley. At 16, you set two world records at the 2023 Canadian Trials.

What powers McIntosh? The desire to be the best while possessing an admirable character.

“Being a good person is the No. 1 priority, and then their sport,” Jill McIntosh said. “I don’t think it would be a very fun journey if you didn’t feel proud of who you were and at the same time excel at your sport.”

As McIntosh dove into the pool March 28 at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, he didn’t realize a world record was on the line. He was competing in the 400 meter freestyle final at the Canadian Trials. He glided across the pool, and as his lead increased, so did the crowd’s electric energy. He hit the wall in a time of 3:56.08, breaking the world record.

As she exited the pool, the stoic McIntosh let her emotion out. After her morning swim, she didn’t think she could set a world record. Photos of McIntosh breaking the record and hugging Arckey are displayed in the coach’s office.

“That picture of someone looking at the scoreboard and saying, ‘Oh my God. “I just did something that I didn’t think was possible, or that I didn’t think I could do.” I think that’s why a lot of us come to the pool every day,” Arckey said.

McIntosh became the youngest to break a world record in an Olympic program event since Ledecky in 2013. Four days later, she also set a world record in the 400-meter individual medley.

“I don’t think Summer has digested the fact that setting world records or personal bests in every single event is so hard to do,” Jill said of the trials performance.

If the Canadian Trials showed pure euphoria, the start of the 2023 world championships highlighted stark disappointment. In the opening session of the finals, McIntosh faced Ledecky and Australian superstar Ariarne Titmus in a highly anticipated 400 meter freestyle final. It was the first time since the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that the three competed in the same race.

McIntosh finished fourth, missing the podium. Titmus broke McIntosh’s world record to win gold, while Ledecky placed second. A disappointing result for the Canadian. Arckey gave her space.

“He wasn’t happy,” Arckey recalls.

The two had a long conversation. She still had several roots left. McIntosh had a day off before returning to the pool. She allowed her to wash away the bad race and refocus on what lay ahead of her. Despite her disappointment, several swimmers reached out to McIntosh, offering words of encouragement. She was surprised by the outpouring of support from the swimming community.

“’Everyone’s so nice to tell me,’” Jill Summer recalls. “It’s all about respect. “You have to have respect for your competitors.”

McIntosh won two gold medals at the world championships, in the 200 meter butterfly and the 400 meter medley. She won bronze in the 200 freestyle and the 4×100 medley relay. Fourth place in the 400 freestyle was in the rearview.

“You learn so much from having bad races,” McIntosh said. “When I have a negative experience in a race, I try to turn it into a positive experience as much as possible. What I can take away from it is learning where I went wrong before the race and during the race, learning to refine my focus and discipline to perform as well as possible in my subsequent races.

McIntosh gets a ride from one of his teammates back to the “shark tank”. In the car, Drake songs blast from the speakers. Before returning to the pool, McIntosh completes 45 minutes of dry land training. This involves weight lifting, burpees, and squat burnouts. All to improve his strength and conditioning in the water.

Afterward, McIntosh jumps into the water for a two-hour pool session. In between sets of freestyle, breaststroke and butterfly, McIntosh can be heard laughing with his teammates.

It’s about to be a life-changing seven months for McIntosh, culminating in the Olympics. She has a chance to become long-distance swimming’s next superstar. If she wins more Olympic gold medals, she will enter a new level of Canadian athletic stardom. She is similar to fellow swimmer Penny Oleksiak (Canada’s most decorated Olympian) or sprinter Andre de Grasse. Which means more attention.

Once the training is complete, McIntosh steps out of the water into the shark tank. He greets a young swimmer asking him to enter the pool to train. The sun sets over the structure as McIntosh exits. With the Olympics on the horizon, the spotlight on the Canadian continues to grow.

(Top photo of Summer McIntosh displaying her gold medal in the 400 meter individual medley at the 2023 world championships: Nikola Krstic/BSR Agency/Getty Images)