Summer McIntosh wins first-ever Olympic gold — and by quite a margin, too

PARIS – It is Summer’s time indeed: Golden, glorious and devastatingly dominant.

The 17-year-old from Toronto unleashed a performance for the Olympic ages here on Monday night with a dominant gold medal swim in the women’s 400-metre individual medley.

She led from the first 50 metres through to 400 when she touched the wall, removed her swim cap and pumped her right hand in the air four times in triumph.

That McIntosh won her signature race with such flair cemented her reputation as a future star of the pool, one that has now arrived in the most spectacular fashion.

It was no contest, really, as she led throughout, as the sellout crowd at La Defense Arena urged her on. Her winning time of four minutes, 27.71 seconds was an incredulous 5.69 seconds ahead of runner-up Katie Grimes of the U.S.

McIntosh’s victory marked the third consecutive Games that a Canadian woman has captured gold, joining Penny Oleksiak (100-metre freestyle at Rio 2016) and Maggie Mac Neil (100-metre butterfly at Tokyo 2021.)

The effort, in front of another full house at the rocking Olympic venue, continued McIntosh’s global dominance in what has become her signature event and distance. She has held the world record for more than a year, most recently lowering it to 4:24.38 at the Canadian Olympic trials in Toronto this May. She came to Paris as the reigning champion two years running, towering over a field that she was expected to dominate.

After an almost leisurely win in her preliminary heat on Monday morning, McIntosh noticeably stepped it up in the semi-final. She was in control from start to finish, using her fourth swim of these Games as the ideal prep to chase down her first gold.

“I was pretty happy with it,” McIntosh said following her semi-final performance, which earned her Lane 3 for the final after posting the third-fastest time in her heats. “Going into this morning I was just trying to get the heats out of the way and gets a good lane heading into the finals. That goal was accomplished and I’m excited for tonight.”

Excited and ready, apparently. Working in Sarasota, Fla. with her coach Brent Arckey, the two essentially put together a 50-week program aimed at peaking for this week.

That regimen was validated on Saturday with a superb silver medal effort in the 400-metre freestyle in which she comfortably outraced American star Katie Ledecky for second but couldn’t track down Aussie winner Ariarne Titmus and ideally was creating momentum for the remainder of her meet.

“I try to treat every day of my (meet) like Day 1,” McIntosh said following her morning heat. “It is a very long meet, but the best way to manage those is just by trying to recover as much as possible and preparing at the same time for my following races.”

With a second medal to her collection, McIntosh continues to forge her reputation as an elite competitor, one who first served notice of her potential when she competed in the Tokyo Games as a 14-year-old.

“Without question, she’s one of the names mentioned as one of the top swimmers in the world,” John Atkinson, Swimming Canada’s high performance director and national coach said prior to the Games. “I think she’s very, very driven, organized and professional in how she goes about things. She’s a mature young lady and sometimes you forget she’s 17-years-old.”

They won’t forget much else about this four-time world champion, a Canadian record holder in six events, a world record holder, and now a two-time Olympic medalist.

And the best part for the surging Canadian swimming program? Summer McIntosh is just getting started.