{"id":529945,"date":"2023-06-22T05:15:29","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T12:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=529945"},"modified":"2023-06-22T05:47:32","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T12:47:32","slug":"teen-star-summer-mcintosh-a-cross-between-the-present-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/teen-star-summer-mcintosh-a-cross-between-the-present-and-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen Star Summer McIntosh A Cross Between the Present and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teen Star Summer McIntosh A Cross Between the Present and Future<\/strong><\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Summer McIntosh<\/strong>, only 16 years of age, occupies a moment between present and future. Improving with each passing competition, with an Olympic appearance and two World Championship gold medals to her name before she\u2019s old enough to legally operate a motor vehicle, her present is special. Her future has no foreseeable ceiling, except to push boundaries.<\/em><\/p>\n

Summer McIntosh<\/strong> didn\u2019t know what to expect, but she at least had an idea of what to look for.<\/p>\n

She and Maggie Mac Neil<\/strong> had a little time to talk it through before the Bell Canadian Swimming Trials in March, one world record holder sharing wisdom with a swimmer on a collision course with history sooner rather than later. How does one process swimming a distance and discipline faster than anyone in history? How does one wrap their mind around a 500-gram hunk of precious metal around one\u2019s neck that is the manifestation of a decades-long professional quest? What does it mean to have your title changed to something like \u201cworld record holder\u201d forever onward?<\/p>\n

By the time McIntosh set her first world record on the night of March 28, covering 400 meters of freestyle in 3 minutes, 56.08 seconds at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, she hadn\u2019t let herself grapple with those questions yet, not in the way her veteran mentor has.<\/p>\n

But McIntosh knew what she wanted out of her world-record moment<\/a>, if it ever came. She knew how to find the friends and family so instrumental to her journey in the stands, how to bask in the adulation of a hometown that she had left for training and returned to like a conquering if softspoken hero, how to share essentially her first moment as world record holder in an on-deck embrace with her close friend and teammate, Victoria Raymond<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"summer-mcintosh-\"

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick<\/p><\/div>\n

By the end of the meet, all that she\u2019d accomplished hadn\u2019t quite sunk in. But the 16-year-old, savvy beyond her years, knew enough to plot the next steps. \u201cI don\u2019t think things like this ever fully sink in,\u201d McIntosh said after her first world record. \u201cI definitely want it to eventually, but it definitely hasn\u2019t sunk in yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, she\u2019ll have to settle for this: It\u2019s sunk in for the rest of the world just how exceptionally outstanding McIntosh is. In short order, she\u2019s gone from an accomplished junior swimmer to a prime figure in the illustrious Canadian program to the author of one of the most singularly dominant weeks of swimming ever. In half an Olympic cycle, she\u2019s morphed from promising talent to gold-medal contender\u2014even in events that are the province of some of the sport\u2019s titans, an echelon she could soon join.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really don\u2019t focus on records that much, but it\u2019s basically any athlete\u2019s dream to get a world record or achieve something like that,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen it happened…I still think I\u2019m in complete shock. It was such an incredible moment to share with all the Canadians in the stands and a bunch of my family and friends who were also on deck and in the stands.\u201d<\/p>\n

A TERRIFIC TORONTO TRIALS<\/strong><\/p>\n

What McIntosh achieved at the Pan Am Sports Centre enters rarefied air among the most outstanding swim meets ever assembled. A Trials meet can\u2019t occupy the same lofty place in history as Michael Phelps<\/strong> in Beijing, Mark Spitz<\/strong> in Munich or Emma McKeon<\/strong> in Tokyo. But for time and for history, the case is compelling:<\/p>\n