Summer McIntosh is the world’s finest ladies’s swimmer. At Pan Pacs, she hopes for brand spanking new heights

IRVINE, Calif. — When Canadian Olympic swimmer Summer McIntosh started coaching with the University of Texas professional group following the 2025 world championships, Bob Bowman wasn’t fairly certain what to anticipate. The longtime coach, finest recognized for his work with 28-time Olympic medalist Michael Phelps, rapidly found the identical qualities which have been lauded by those that have been round McIntosh for years.

At 19, she is businesslike. She desires suggestions. She’s continually searching for tiny methods to enhance. All of it has reworked her into probably the most dominant, versatile swimmers on this planet.

“I knew she’d train hard, but wow,” Bowman mentioned. “She’s more serious than I am, and that’s pretty serious.”

This week, the Toronto native will compete on the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Irvine, her first main worldwide meet below Bowman’s tutelage. She’ll go face to face towards most of the prime swimmers from the U.S., Australia and Japan and can look to bolster a resume that already consists of 4 Olympic medals (three golds), eight long-course world championship golds and 4 world data.

“It’s such a gift to witness it,” mentioned Brittany MacLean Campbell, a 2016 Olympic bronze medalist for Canada and now an analyst for CBC. “And if I could fully understand it, I would have been a better swimmer.”

Pan Pacs additionally carries household connections. McIntosh’s mother, Jill, is a former Canadian Olympian who gained bronze within the 200-meter butterfly on the 1985 Pan Pacs, one in every of her two worldwide medals (the opposite being on the 1986 Commonwealth Games). That, in addition to the meet being about an hour’s drive from the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic venue, provides further layers of pleasure for McIntosh. She mentioned she’s “been working towards Pan Pacs for a long time now.”

All that effort, she hopes, has put her in place to peak this week.

That’s a great signal for her nationwide crew. Said John Atkinson, Swimming Canada’s excessive efficiency director and nationwide coach: “You can’t put a limit on what she can achieve.”

---

Though McIntosh’s mother was a swimmer, Summer and her older sister Brooke got loads of athletic choices rising up. The 21-year-old Brooke took to determine skating, competing within the sport till 2025.

Summer skated as a child, too, and Brooke mentioned that when her sister stopped round age 9, “she was better than me.” Not unhealthy, contemplating Brooke went on to signify Canada on the World Junior Championships and Winter Youth Olympics. But for as proficient as Summer would possibly’ve been, a number of the traits that make her a wonderful swimmer held her again on skates.

“She dives in the pool and just goes 110 percent all the time,” Brooke mentioned. “Sometimes you can’t really do that in skating. You’ve gotta have some control to it. She couldn’t really grasp that part of it.”

Plus, Summer didn’t just like the judging side. In swimming, she didn’t should take care of that. All racing comes right down to is touching the wall first, and as McIntosh did that an increasing number of, she began drawing eyes throughout Canada.

MacLean Campbell got here up by means of the Etobicoke Swim Club, simply as McIntosh did after her. In the years after the 2016 Olympics, MacLean Campbell often popped by practices. She remembers standing behind the blocks in the future as her former coach, the late Kevin Thorburn, excitedly identified an 11-year-old McIntosh slicing by means of the water.

“He was bragging to me about all the times she was hitting,” MacLean Campbell recalled. “‘How cool is this? This is what she was able to do in this set that you used to do! I can’t believe she’s so young!’”

Before lengthy, folks far outdoors Canada knew she was coming. At 14, she made the Tokyo Olympics, which had been delayed as a result of COVID-19 pandemic. Though she narrowly missed the rostrum, ending fourth in each the 400-meter freestyle and 4×200-meter freestyle relay, she established herself as one of many brightest younger swimmers on this planet. And the expertise, in her eyes, was invaluable. She received a way of how worldwide meets work behind the scenes — going by means of the processes of media and drug testing, for instance — and “was like a sponge” observing her idols on deck.

“Being 19, looking at my 14-year-old self, I couldn’t be more proud of what I did,” she mentioned. “I couldn’t care less about not having a medal there. That was, I think, the perfect scenario. Not getting that medal just left me so much hungrier into the following year.”

That starvation propelled her to the highest of her sport. Two golds at worlds the subsequent summer season. Two extra in 2023. Then, lastly, a large displaying on the 2024 Olympics: golds within the 200-meter butterfly, 200-meter particular person medley and 400-meter IM, plus a silver within the 400-meter freestyle. The meet showcased two of McIntosh’s best strengths: her versatility and her penchant for rising to the event. MacLean Campbell says she may most likely “be world-class in double-digit events” if meet schedules allowed for it.

By the top of the Paris Games, McIntosh was recognized round Canada. MacLean Campbell mentioned that whereas she makes certain to say swimmers’ full names when speaking to non-niche followers in Canada, with McIntosh, “Summer” suffices.

In December 2024, a number of months after the Olympics, McIntosh was again within the Toronto space, purchasing at a mall. Suddenly she observed a police officer approaching her. She grew nervous. Had she by accident executed one thing flawed?

No. The cop had acknowledged her and wished to say hey.

---

McIntosh doesn’t just like the phrase “sacrifice.” When she was just a little youthful, she generally considered what she gave up for swimming that manner: Seeing her pals much less usually or going to high school in individual, for instance. But not these days.

“It’s just the steps I have to take to be able to reach the goals I want to do,” McIntosh mentioned.

Moving away from household — from Toronto to Sarasota, Fla., for coaching in 2022 — is an exception. “That is truly a sacrifice,” she mentioned. But forgoing components of an ordinary 19-year-old’s life? That’s simply a part of the deal.

Whether thought-about sacrifices or vital steps, her selections have led to main accomplishments. Last summer season, she gained 4 particular person golds at world championships, and she or he picked up a bronze within the 800-meter freestyle, an occasion she says she contested to “just get out of my comfort zone.” Most just lately, at Canadian Swimming Trials in July, she gained the 200-meter butterfly in 2:01.65, breaking Liu Zige’s 2009 world document — the longest-standing document in ladies’s swimming and the final from the “super suit” period that noticed scores of data fall. She raised her fist and slapped the water in pleasure.

An sickness pressured McIntosh to withdraw from the top of trials — she says she’s effective going into Pan Pacs — however her world document at the very least gave her house crowd a permanent reminiscence. McIntosh’s reflections on the race supply perception into her mindset. She’s proud of the swim, however she can also watch it again and consider she may begin the race just a little sooner, velocity up her turns and perhaps even enhance the way in which she strikes underwater off partitions.

To McIntosh, the impracticality of perfection isn’t discouraging. It ensures she at all times has one thing to work towards.

Her transfer to Texas is the newest step in that course of. She learn Phelps’ books and dreamed of coaching below Bowman, who runs the Longhorns’ males’s crew and professional group. Now she trains each day with the likes of Léon Marchand, Simone Manuel, Regan Smith and Hubert Kós, all Olympic gold medalists.

“There isn’t a single thing at practice that she doesn’t excel at, which is really cool, because I think a lot of swimmers have their specialties,” says Smith, who takes credit score for sparking McIntosh’s latest curiosity in studying. “You can kind of count on her to be A+ at anything we do.”

McIntosh is ready to race the 200-meter freestyle (Wednesday), 400-meter particular person medley (Thursday), 400-meter freestyle (Friday) and 200-meter particular person medley (Saturday) on the Pan Pacific Championships, she instructed CBC. That means she’ll scratch Wednesday’s 200-meter butterfly — the occasion she’s already set a world document on this summer season — to give attention to the 200 freestyle, the one of those 5 occasions through which she isn’t the present world-record holder, on the primary day of the meet. That race may find yourself being her fifth particular person occasion on the 2028 Olympics, so a completely rested race ought to present a beneficial information level because the Los Angeles Games creep nearer. And one other showdown with American star Katie Ledecky awaits within the 400 freestyle.

Given her trials efficiency and the truth that she’s totally rested, McIntosh appears primed for an enormous meet in Irvine and is hoping to set private finest occasions.

And when the 19-year-old units finest occasions, it often means heights no different swimmer has ever reached.