Minutes after beating American great Katie Ledecky to win her first Olympic medal, a silver in the 400-metre freestyle, Summer McIntosh said she was trying to set a good tone for the Canadian team on Day 1 of the Paris Olympics.
“We’re literally just getting started,” McIntosh told CBC Sports’ Devin Heroux.
McIntosh said she’s always most nervous on the opening day of a meet, and since getting that race off her plate, the 17-year-old swimming superstar has taken off.
First, there was gold in the 400-metre individual medley, a race where McIntosh was dominant from start to finish. She touched the wall more than five seconds ahead of her closest competition, American Katie Grimes.
Then, she captured gold in the 200-metre butterfly, a victory made sweeter by the fact it was the race her mother, Jill, competed in during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
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Exactly how many medals McIntosh will take home from Paris remains to be seen. Next up is the 200-metre individual medley final on Saturday at 3:08 p.m. ET. Live coverage will be on CBC TV, CBC Gem, the CBC Olympics app or on the CBC Olympics website.
What is clear is that McIntosh is only getting started, and the sky’s the limit for the swimmer who’s always drawn inspiration from Michael Phelps, considered the greatest swimmer of all-time.
As she stood atop the podium for the first time after winning gold, McIntosh seemed to be enjoying the moment and taking it all in.
It’s a moment Olympic bronze medallist Brent Hayden expected to see. Three years ago, Hayden was swimming in a pre-Olympic staging camp in Vancouver when he looked to his left and saw a 14-year-old McIntosh pacing him.
“She really is just an incredible, incredible swimmer,” said Hayden, who placed third in the 100-metre freestyle at the London Games in 2012.
“We are lucky that she’s from Canada. She’s going to be one of those generational greats that swimmers will be looking back at.”
‘Everything we were expecting it would be’
Tokyo was McIntosh’s first senior international meet. Looking back, McIntosh said those Olympics were harder mentally.
Having no fans in the stands was difficult, McIntosh told reporters in Paris this week, because she likes to feed off the crowd’s energy.
This time, she’s had packed crowds at Paris La Défense Arena to draw momentum from. Among the faces in the crowd at every race has been McIntosh’s family, including parents, Jill and Greg, and older sister, Brooke.
With competition spread over nine days, it’s a long program for swimmers like McIntosh. Finding opportunities to rest has been key.
“It’s more simple than people think behind the scenes,” McIntosh said on Thursday. “All I’m doing is eating and sleeping when I’m not swimming. Rest my brain as much as possible.”
After winning gold in the 400m individual medley, and with a day off from competing on Tuesday, McIntosh took some time to take everything in. She reached out to friends and family, including those back home cheering her on.
It’s that calmness that has always made McIntosh stand out. Hayden described it as a maturity “beyond her years.”
“I think it’s a testament as well to prove that you can still be young and do something incredible,” he said. “You don’t need to wait. Your time is whenever it is that you want to make it.”
No one knows that better than Penny Oleksiak, who stunned the world in Rio when she won four Olympic medals at only 16 years old. She added another three in Tokyo to become the most decorated Canadian Olympian of all time.
“Just watching her through the week, and how she carries herself and how she’s been preparing for this, it was everything we were expecting it would be,” a now-24-year-old Oleksiak told reporters in Paris after McIntosh won her first medal last Saturday.
The two take a different approach to swimming.
McIntosh, she said, “is really meticulous in everything she does,” while Oleksiak is more laid back in her approach.
“If anything, we balance each other out perfectly,” Oleksiak said.
A lot of people ask her if she’s McIntosh’s mentor, Oleksiak said, and whether the Toronto native looks up to her.
“I think Summer’s on this insane path and she’s killing it,” she said.
A path back to pool dominance
Canada was dominant in the pool in the 1970s, 1980s and into the early 90s, powered by swimmers like Alex Baumann, the late Victor Davis and Mark Tewksbury, among others.
But things levelled off into the 2000s. Canada won only one medal racing in the pool in Sydney in 2000 (a bronze for Curtis Myden) and none in Athens in 2004.
“I still feel somewhat responsible for that,” Hayden said about the team’s performance in Athens.
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Ryan Cochrane got on the podium in Beijing in 2008, and again in 2012, along with Hayden. Canada also won a marathon swimming bronze medal (Richard Weinberger) in London.
But it felt like a breakthrough in Rio in 2016, led by Oleksiak and her four Olympic medals.
“They just kicked that door back down and said we’re here,” Hayden said.
It wasn’t a one-off. Canada continued to have success in the pool in Tokyo.
This team in Paris is even deeper. John Atkinson, Swimming Canada’s national coach and high performance director, told The Canadian Press it was the deepest group he’s taken to the Olympics.
McIntosh is the face of that group. The New York Times dubbed the Olympics “Summer’s Games” after she won her first gold.
But there are plenty of other talented swimmers on the team, including Josh Liendo and Ilya Kharun, who won bronze in the 200-metre butterfly behind French star Léon Marchand and Hungarian Kristof Milak.
“I just can’t wait to keep showing people what I can do,” 19-year-old Kharun said after the race.
Back in Tokyo in 2021, Hayden touched the wall in the 4×100 freestyle relay final and Liendo dove over him to swim the next leg. The team barely missed the podium.
“For me, that’s kind of like that metaphorical passing of the torch moment,” Hayden said.
Liendo lowered his own Canadian record at trials this spring in the 100-metre butterfly. He’ll swim the final in that event on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. ET.
Not to be forgotten is Kylie Masse, the veteran who became the first Canadian swimmer to medal in three consecutive Olympic Games when she won bronze in the 200-metre backstroke on Friday.
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While it’s unlikely Canada will eclipse the 10 swimming medals won at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics — a boycotted Games — the team should challenge the six won each in Tokyo and Rio.
That first night of the Games, McIntosh got to feel what it was like to wear an Olympic medal for the first time. It might have been expected, but that didn’t make the moment any less special.
“When I actually put the silver around my neck, I was actually in shock, because no medal has been that heavy before,” McIntosh said.