Canada's Summer McIntosh celebrates with her gold medal won in the 200m women's individual medley final during the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, in Nanterre, France, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
It’s official, when it comes to the Olympics, there’s never been a Summer like this.
Summer McIntosh, the 17-year-old generational talent from Toronto, won her third gold medal in Paris on Saturday, making her the first Canadian to top the podium three times in one Olympics.
It was her fourth medal in Paris after also winning a silver on the first night of the Games.
McIntosh placed first in the 200-metre individual medley in a time of 2 minutes 6.56 seconds, an Olympic record.
American Kate Douglass claimed silver at 2 minutes 6.92 seconds, and Australia’s Kaylee McKeown took bronze in 2 minutes 8.08 seconds. Alex Walsh of the U.S. appeared to win silver before being disqualified for an illegal midrace turn.
After the win, McIntosh, who has been the picture of a focused and serious athlete all week, dropped her shoulders and laughed when asked if she had paused to consider what this means for her place in Canadian sport.
“Uh, no,” she said. “I mean there’s been so many before me that have led the way and inspired me to be where I am today and I really owe a lot of that to them. And, yeah I’m just proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish for Team Canada.”
That response was the first sign all week that McIntosh, who came into Paris with huge expectations and pressure in multiple events, can now start to relax a little, with her four individual races complete.
The victory is the latest bit of history that McIntosh has rewritten. After winning silver in the 400-metre freestyle to open the Olympics, she followed up with successive gold medals in the 400-metre individual medley and the 200-metre butterfly.
That made her the only Canadian swimmer to win three individual medals at a single Olympics. Now, she’s pushed that record to four, including the three golds.
Having now gone four for four in terms of making the podium in her individual races, she acknowledged that, yes, maybe it was mission accomplished. She then quickly said she isn’t about to rest on her laurels.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m always wanting more,” McIntosh said. “I’m never satisfied and I think that’s one of my strengths. But yeah, I’m obviously very happy with the result. I couldn’t ask for that much more.”
Though it is a decision left up to her coach, McIntosh said there is a strong possibility that she will swim in Sunday’s 4x100 women’s medley relay final. If she were to claim a medal in that race, on the last day of swimming at the Olympics, it would give her a fifth medal, tying her for the record for most hardware at a single Games, which was set by speedskater Cindy Klassen in 2006.
All week, McIntosh and her coach have walked the line on how they talk about medals. They don’t discuss what colour is the goal, her coach Brent Arckey said, but they did come to Paris to win.
Her four-medal tally in Paris also puts her even with Penny Oleksiak’s spectacular performance in Rio, where the then-16-year-old Oleksiak won four, including an individual gold and silver, and two bronze in the team relays.
McIntosh said she was inspired by watching Oleksiak’s performance in 2016, along with Kylie Masse who also won a medal that year.
“Ever since Rio, when Canadian swimming was kind of was flipped on its head,” McIntosh said, referring to when her podium dreams took root.
“I’m just so proud of myself and how I’ve been able to recover and manage these events – because it is a lot,” she said. “And the reason I’m able to do this is because of all the hard work and dedication I’ve given to this moment, along with my family and my teammates and coaches that have also worked so hard for me to be here today.”
She maintained her strict no-celebration policy that she’s been sticking to all week until every race is over. That may come after the relay on Sunday.
“After I touch the wall for the relay tomorrow, I’ll probably be able to start celebrating more,” she said.
Of her four individual events in Paris, Saturday’s was the one McIntosh was least familiar with. She had never competed in the 200-metre individual medley at the Olympic or world championship level.
As a middle-distance specialist, she’d only raced the 200-IM once internationally – at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, where she won gold.
Both medleys are similar, where the swimmer must deploy all four strokes in one race: the butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle.
But in an event where each stroke gets deployed in one length of the pool, the race, with its turns and transitions to a new stroke, happens at a much faster pace.
“I know I’m really good at working transitions, switching stroke to stroke,” McIntosh said on Friday, before the race. “But at the same time, I’ve got to work my speed.”
Marianne Limpert, who won silver in the 200-metre individual medley at the 1996 Atlanta Games, calls the 200 medley “a controlled sprint” with constant resets after each length.
“In essence, you’re starting a whole different race because you’re swimming a totally different stroke,” Ms. Limpert said.
Elaine Tanner, who won three medals for Canada as a 17-year-old at the 1968 Summer Games, said the 200-metre medley was one of her favourite races.
“It was all-out fast with lots of adrenalin,” Ms. Tanner said.
“Any strength or weakness in a particular stroke is exaggerated by a factor of two, which in a relatively middistance race can make a huge difference at the finish.”
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