Summer McIntosh continuing to make huge Olympic waves: 'This kid can move'

Editor's note: This article was published before Summer McIntosh opened the Olympics with a silver medal in the 400-metre freestyle and won a gold in the 200-m butterfly.

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Not long after Summer McIntosh made history as the youngest Canadian to win a world championship in swimming at the age of 15, she and her mom called up Brent Arckey to inquire whether he’d consider working with McIntosh on a regular basis.

Arckey, the head coach and CEO of the Florida-based Sarasota Sharks, didn’t need to mull over the idea.

“It’s like getting a call from the No. 1 pick,” Arckey says now, of the conversation that led to McIntosh relocating to Sarasota in the fall of 2022. As he told his staff of the Toronto teen who’d be joining them: “She has the ability to be the best.”

On Saturday, that ability will be on full display on the Olympic stage. McIntosh, now 17, is a podium threat in all four of her individual races, and she’ll kick things off with the 400-metre freestyle. In two of her events — the 400-m individual medley and 200-m butterfly — she is the 2023 and '22 world champion, and in the former she holds the world record, which is nearly two seconds faster than any other woman she’ll be swimming against. McIntosh’s individual schedule rounds out with the 200-m IM, and she’ll also be called on to race in as many as four relays.

It's fitting that on the first day medals are awarded in Paris, McIntosh will be in the pool for what has the makings of an absolute heavyweight battle. The 400-m freestyle field includes American Katie Ledecky, who won Olympic gold (one of seven in her collection) in the event in 2016, and Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, the reigning world and Olympic champion and world-record holder.  

It was McIntosh who held the 400-m freestyle world record up until the 2023 world championships, where she finished a disappointing fourth. “What I’m most proud of is, that was the biggest race she was in last summer, and it wasn’t what she wanted,” Arckey says. “To me, the average 16-year-old would’ve folded and been just absolutely distraught. To her credit, we sat down, we talked it through and she moved on. For the rest of the event, she was great.” McIntosh flew home with four medals: Two gold and two bronze.

Now a four-time world champion, she heads into these Games with a bold spotlight on her, and not just in Canada — the Olympic website has an article focused on How to Watch Summer McIntosh Live. It’s a very different situation from the 2020 Tokyo Games, where she was Canada’s youngest swimmer at 14 and placed fourth in the 400-m freestyle with few expectations outside of her own. Now there’s talk McIntosh could be Canada’s star in Paris, that she could break her teammate Penny Oleksiak’s record four medals won in 2016, the biggest haul by a Canadian at a single Summer Games.

It's a lot for a kid to shoulder. But if you ask Maggie Mac Neil, Canada’s reigning Olympic champion in the 100-m butterfly, McIntosh isn’t affected by outside expectations. “For her age, she’s the most mature person I’ve ever met,” says Mac Neil, who’s six years older than McIntosh. “I think she’s more mature than most of the people on the national team. She’s just taking everything with such grace and humility, so it’s been really cool to see. I’ve known her since she was 14, and she’s handled everything so well.”

“No one gets to see the weight that she has to carry,” adds Ryan Mallette, head coach of Canada’s high performance centre in Ontario, where McIntosh trained full-time before she moved to Sarasota. “She does a great job of not bringing that everywhere she goes, and her teammates, I’m sure, admire that quality in her.”

Count Finlay Knox among them. The 23-year-old says he’s learned a lot from watching McIntosh, particularly between races and training sessions with the national team. “She does an amazing job of having a fun time outside of the pool. She has great banter with everyone and she’s such a kind soul to be around,” says Knox, the 2024 world champion in the 200-m medley. “She helps not only the younger athletes but the older athletes realize that when you’re at a swim meet, you don’t have to be serious all the time. You can enjoy yourself and laugh and have fun.”

As mature, deliberate and consistent as she is in the water (Knox calls her “a robot”) McIntosh acts her age on land. “She loves Drake and Kanye,” Knox says, but when the team puts on a song like Mr. Brightside by The Killers, everyone’s singing along while McIntosh asks: “What is this song?” It’s fair since it was released two years before she was born. “It’s a reminder that, yeah, she’s a baby,” Knox says.

“We’re good friends, but we don’t have the same interests, like I’m not really into F1 or the Kardashians, and those are her main things she enjoys watching,” adds Mac Neil, who was McIntosh’s roommate at the last Olympics and the 2022 world championships (she’s thankful McIntosh doesn’t snore). “She’s still a minor, but she has her driver’s licence now, which is good. She’s almost old enough to vote. That’s another step.”

Knox points out McIntosh is entirely human, too, and isn’t exceptional at everything she tries. “I remember watching her try to throw a ball and kick a ball, and it’s a good thing she chose swimming,” he says.  

When she first chose to train with the Sarasota Sharks, it was back in 2021 for a six-week-long training camp. Chris Sustala, a long-time coach with the team, got a call from Arckey, who told him: “This kid can move.” Sustala confirmed that when he saw her practise for the first time. “I mean, it was clear: she wants to win every lap, from warmup to drills — she wants to win everything,” he says.  

“She’s not going to let anybody beat her,” Arckey adds. “And if somebody does beat her, they have to go above and beyond to beat her. And that doesn’t happen very often. She doesn’t like it when somebody does beat her. That’s a big one with her, the old hating to lose more than you like to win kind of thing. She certainly has that trait.”

In the earliest days of coaching McIntosh, Arckey immediately noticed her consistency in effort and attitude, and the professional way she took care of herself. It struck him that despite her young age, when he’d be coaching her, “she always looked me right in the face,” and absorbed the information, then asked questions if she had any. “She’s a student of the sport,” he adds. The only time McIntosh ever asked him to miss practice was so she could go see an F1 race in Miami (further proof that she’s very into speed). McIntosh was granted her wish, but didn’t miss a whole practice, and was in the pool until the moment she had to leave.

She and Arckey check in regularly to discuss her goals during the season, and hardware never factors into their conversations. “We talk about being your best when your best is required. The number of medals and all that is really not a motivating factor for her,” he says. “She loves to race. She loves the work that goes into it. When she set her world records, the goals were just to beat her best time.”

If anything, McIntosh is learning to appreciate when the hard work leads her to success. After she won her latest two world titles in 2023, at the end of both races, she asked her coaches what she could’ve done to improve her times.

“We do talk about this with her: ‘Remember, this is special,’” Sustala says. “When you get the opportunity, you do have to acknowledge those accomplishments. Victory is fleeting but you do need to revel in it appropriately.”

It’s been nearly two years since McIntosh began regularly training with the Sharks, and in that time she’s had many victories to revel in. Arckey has lots of answers when it comes to what makes her great, and after talking through a few — hating to lose, working hard, her ability to “go fast for a really long time” — he lands on what he believes sets McIntosh apart.

“The absolute No. 1 thing for me is she’s a really fierce racer. She’s not afraid to hurt, and she’s not afraid to go to places that other people aren’t willing to go,” he says. “That’s such a gift, and an overlooked gift in my opinion. Everybody thinks it’s all this hard work and then on race day it just happens. But she works just as hard on race day as she does during the week.”

The work starts Saturday (a little after 5 a.m. for the heats / 2:52 p.m. ET final) for McIntosh in Paris with the 400-m freestyle, a showdown between herself, Ledecky and Titmus, who’ve all owned the event’s world-record time. What a way to open the Summer Games for McIntosh, who revels in competition like this.

“She wants to be the best, so she can be in the races that have the best athletes in them,” Arckey says.

“She’s a gamer,” Sustala adds. “The brighter the lights, the faster she goes.”