Nine days of Summer: The incredibly inspiring story of teenage Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh

Nine days of competition (including heats), four individual Olympic medals, including three gold and one silver.
That’s what Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh has managed to achieve at the Paris Olympics. And in the process, she rewrote the Olympic history books, becoming the first Canadian athlete ever, across all sporting disciplines, to win three gold medals in a single edition of the Games.

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Not bad for a 17-year-old school girl, right?

But then, the Paris Games was tagged as the edition where Summer would make the transition from an exceptionally talented teenage prodigy to Olympic champion. And she lived up to the hype and how.
The 17-year-old Canadian, who is based in Sarasota, Florida, where she trains with the Sarasota Sharks at the Selby Aquatic centre, threw down the gauntlet in her very first swim in Paris, the women’s 400m freestyle.

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She was up against the likes of American legend Katie Ledecky (14 Olympic medals, including four in Paris this time) and Aussie sensation Ariarne Titmus (8 Olympic medals, including 4 in Paris this time), who also holds the current world record in this event (3:55.38, set at the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan).

Interestingly, Summer had broken a previous record held by Titmus in this event (women’s 400m freestyle) at a Canadian trial meet in March, 2023. Summer was 16 years old at the time.

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Summer finished the race in second place, 0.88 seconds behind Titmus, but ahead of Ledecky, grabbing the silver medal, which was also her and Canada’s first medal at the Games this time. At 17 years of age, Summer was an Olympic medallist.

But even before she could let the feeling of having won her first Olympic medal sink in, there was heartbreak. Summer and her compatriots finished in the cruelest position possible – fourth – in the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay.

What usually separates the best from the rest at the Olympic level is mental strength and it was amazing to see a 17 year-old stay laser-focussed.

She put the disappointment of the first relay finish behind her to roar into the 400m individual medley. Though she finished third in her heat, she was one of the favourites in the final. And she lived up to that billing – dominating the swim from start to finish and winning the gold medal, finishing as much as five seconds ahead of four-time World Championship (long course) medallist, USA’s Katie Grimes.

This win made Summer McIntosh, from Ontario, Canada, stand right on top of the medals podium - an Olympic champion for the first time.

Next up for Summer was an extremely emotional race – the 200m individual butterfly. Exactly forty years ago, at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Summer’s mother Jill had competed in this race as a 17-year-old and finished ninth, shortly after finishing fourth at the 1983 Pan-Am Games in Venezuela.

There was no heartbreak in store for Summer though, as she blew her competition out of the water, setting a new Olympic record time of 2:03.03 to clinch her second gold medal of the Paris Games and becoming the first ever Canadian woman to win two individual gold medals at the Summer Olympics and the first Canadian overall since the Jamaican-Canadian sprint great Donovan Bailey in 1996 to win two gold medals at a single Olympics.

History then repeated itself, when Summer found herself once again in fourth position, along with her teammates, in the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay, losing out to Australia (gold), USA (silver) and China (bronze). It almost felt like, every time she won a medal, there was the extreme heartbreak of a fourth-place finish waiting for her.

Ask any athlete and they will tell you that fourth is one position no one wants to finish in. The lifelong agony of wondering – ‘what if’.

But while the relay medals were eluding Summer, she was flying high in the individual events. Up next for her was the 200m individual medley – a race she was competing in for just the second time in an international competition after the 2022 Commonwealth Games and she was up against the likes of five-time Olympic medallist (four of them won in Paris this time) Kate Douglass of USA and nine-time Olympic medallist (five of them won in Paris this time) Kaylee McKeown of Australia, who did the 100m and 200m gold double at the Tokyo Games and then again in Paris this time.

Summer was behind Douglass in the race, but used her superior freestyle prowess to surge past the American to clinch the gold with a time of 2:06.56, a new Olympic record. Douglass got the silver (2:06.92), while McKeown (2:08.08) clinched the bronze.

This win made the 17-year-old McIntosh the first Canadian ever to win three gold medals at a Summer Games and with four medals she tied compatriot and fellow swimmer Penelope Oleksiak for most medals for a Canadian athlete in a single edition of the Summer Games.

At Rio 2016, when Oleksiak was winning four medals, including a gold in the 100m individual freestyle, Summer was watching on TV. At Tokyo 2020, Oleksiak won one silver and two bronze medals, while Summer watched her from the sidelines…idolising….waiting for her chance to shine.

Summer in fact almost made it to the podium in Tokyo (2021), finishing fourth in the women’s 400m freestyle. She missed out on a medal, but still managed to set a new National (Canadian) record of 4:02.42. She was 14 years old at the time.

This time, in Paris, Summer the swimmer had improved drastically, both in terms of time and form and she made sure she made the absolute most of the opportunities given to her, winning medals in all four individual swims she participated in (3 gold and 1 silver).

After her third gold in Paris, Summer told CBC Sports - “It’s pretty surreal…I’m just so proud of myself and how I’ve been able to recover and manage events….The reason I’m able to do this is just because of all the hard work and dedication I’ve given to this moment, along with all my family and my teammates, and my coaches have also worked so hard for me to be here today.”

Family support is always crucial – for any top-level athlete and Summer has had that in heaps. Also, swimming runs in Summer’s genes, and how.

As reported by the Toronto Star newspaper, Summer’s mother Jill made the front page of their B-section in 1977 at the age of 10. The headline read – “Etobicoke’s 10-year-old shrimp is a fish among swimmers.”

According to the Toronto Star, Jill was ranked in the top five swimmers in Canada for girls aged 10 and below in the freestyle, backstroke and individual medley events and the top girls’ butterfly swimmer in her age group in 1977. Summer’s parents – Jill and Greg – are the quintessentially supportive mum and dad.

They drive Summer to swim meets and do the same for their other daughter – 19-year-old Brooke – who is also a competitive athlete, competing in pairs-skating. Brooke already has accolades like a bronze in the 2022 World junior Figure Skating Championship and a silver medal at the 2023 Canadian Figure Skating Championship.

Summer and all of Canada were aiming and hoping for a fairytale finish of course in Paris. The last event the 17-year-old swam was the women’s 4x100m medley relay. A fifth medal by Summer would see her tie compatriot and speedskater Cindy Klassen for the most number of medals won by a Canadian athlete in any Olympics (Summer and Winter Games combined).

But guess what? Though McIntosh swam the crucial freestyle anchor leg, the Canadians finished fourth, yet again. This time behind the USA, Australia and China.

The Canadians were in silver medal position till Summer dived into the pool, but she couldn’t hold on to a podium finish position in the last lap. Canada, incredibly, had fourth place finishes in all three women relay swims.

But that is not the abiding memory Summer will have of these Games. Neither will it be the memory that the world has of this incredible swimmer who is still in her teens and in school.

From heats to finals, Summer McIntosh participated in as many as 13 races across nine days and finished with 3 gold medals and 1 silver. That’s more than what most Olympians finish with in their entire career.

While Summer will view these Games as the potential launchpad of a glittering Olympic career, the world will remember a swimmer who scorched the pool in Paris to firmly establish herself, not just as a trailblazer, a Canadian icon and a household name among swimming fans, but as someone who has the potential to perhaps go where no other female swimmer has gone before. After all Summer McIntosh is just 17.