Canada's Summer Mcintosh poses with her medal on the podium of the women's 400 metre individual medley swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/Getty Images
Summer McIntosh’s coach has a standard he uses to tell if a swimmer has what it takes to be a champion. It’s simple: Are they good on a Friday?
It means that when they drag themselves out of bed at 4 a.m. at the end of the week and head to practice, and the rest of the world is already thinking about the weekend, can they still do the job? Can they still deliver like their Olympic fate depends on it?
Summer McIntosh is good on a Friday.
Turns out, she’s pretty talented on other days, too.
On Monday, Ms. McIntosh stunned the crowd at Paris La Défense Arena with a gold medal win in the 400-metre individual medley. It was the first gold medal of her career, Canada’s second medal at the pool this week, and the country’s fifth at the Paris Olympics.
But the shocking part wasn’t that Ms. McIntosh won gold; it was how she did it.
The 17-year-old from Toronto won in spectacular fashion, beating several of the world’s best swimmers handily in one of the sport’s most gruelling races. She led from the blocks, and over 400 metres never relinquished her lead. By the time she touched the wall, she was nearly six seconds ahead of American Katie Grimes, who won silver.
The 400-metre medley – a mix of four different styles: the butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle – is her signature race. It is a combination of speed and endurance in which Ms. McIntosh holds the world record, a mark she set last year, then bettered in May.
Summer McIntosh of Canada in action during the women's 400 metre individual medley final in Paris, on Tuesday July 29, 2024.Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters
On paper, she owns the 400 IM. In the pool in Paris, she reminded the world that it’s still her event. Heading into the last quarter of the race, Ms. McIntosh glanced over at the competition and saw no one. At that moment she knew.
“I kind of looked around to make sure I was in a comfortable lead and definitely knew that I had the gold medal going into that last 100 metres,” Ms. McIntosh said.
It came just two days after she won silver in the 400-metre freestyle, giving Canada its first medal in Paris. After that win, she smiled, cherished the silver, but behind the scenes, she wasn’t completely happy.
“Champions always want more,” Swimming Canada’s high performance director John Atkinson said.
And Ms. McIntosh acknowledged as much after the victory. “I was very happy to get the job done tonight,” she said. “It was a goal of mine to be able to stand on top of the podium and get the gold medal.”
She is a swimming phenom that has stormed onto the scene in the past few years, setting world records and winning world championships. But her origins actually date back further. Ms. McIntosh is no overnight sensation. She is the daughter of Jill McIntosh, who raced for Canada at the 1984 Olympics under her maiden name, Horstead, and Summer began turning heads at age 12.
But her ability to master all four strokes in swimming, and deploy them at world-record level, is what set her apart at a young age.
“The 400 IM is kind of a unique one,” said her coach, Brent Arckey. “It kind of runs all the disciplines from speed to endurance to all four strokes and then being able to transition between them and she’s just excellent at all of that stuff.”
But the key to Ms. McIntosh’s success is her ability to learn, from her mistakes, and from coaches who have seen where her talent could take her over a long career.
“She’s been taught well and I think the best part is she’s open to learning,” Mr. Arckey said. “So if you have a teenager that’s willing to learn and learn how to manage all that stuff, this is the end result.”
When she stood on the podium singing O Canada after the race, she sang the first third in English, the second third in French, and the last in English.
“That’s how I learned it every day in school,” Ms. McIntosh said. “I still remember growing up every single day standing up at the beginning of class singing O Canada. So yeah, now being able to do it at the Olympic Games is pretty surreal.”
It was only the 10th gold medal Canada has won in Olympic swimming since 1912.
Summer McIntosh, of Canada, celebrates after winning the women's 400 metre individual medley final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, in Nanterre, France on July 29.Bernat Armangue/The Associated Press
Ms. McIntosh touched the wall in a time of 4 minutes, 27.71 seconds. Ms. Grimes won silver in 4:33.40, and Emma Weyant of the U.S. took bronze in 4:34.93.
Ms. McIntosh acknowledged some nerves beforehand, and said the silver medal on Saturday didn’t necessarily ease the pressure heading into the medley.
“Not necessarily because they are such different events and I try to take every event very individually, and just one by one,” she said.
“But yeah, starting off the meet, getting on the podium is definitely a great way to start.”
In her first two individual races, both of them pressure cookers against top-level talent, Ms. McIntosh hasn’t looked fazed.
“I think just because I have been doing this since I was 14,” she said, referencing her debut at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, where she narrowly missed the podium but got a taste of what swimming is like at this level.
“Every single time I get to race on the world stage, I learn more and more about handling it mentally and physically and emotionally, and trying not to get too high and too low, depending on my race results.”
Mr. Arckey said the two never talked in detail about winning the gold, though making history was definitely something they both thought about.
“We have never talked about medals and colours of medals. We have always talked about trying to be the best that we can possibly be, as cliché as that sounds,” he said.
“I would be lying if I didn’t think that it was in the back of anybody’s mind. Of course it is. But it wasn’t important for us to talk about that. It was important for us to do the things day-to-day in order to have this result.”
Teammate Mary-Sophie Harvey recalled watching Ms. McIntosh quietly fume after coming in fourth in the 400-metre freestyle in Tokyo, and suspected it was the start of something big.
Even though she went to those Olympics as a rookie, with no expectations, the missed podium bothered her, and she vowed to learn from it.
“She loves to compete,” Ms. Harvey said. “I remember in Tokyo … she was so angry. And I loved it, because I was like, you’re 14. It was so amazing. And I knew, like, from that moment.”
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