Summer McIntosh named World Female Swimmer of the Year
At the start of a new Olympic quadrennial, 2025 was always going to be a year of experimentation for Summer McIntosh.
Now 19, she’ll turn 22 just after the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, her third Games. It will fall not just in the prime of her career but at a central pivot in what is building toward one of the great careers the sport has ever known, with a home-continent advantage to boot.
So the planning accelerated this year. There would be changes in training location, part of growing not just as a swimmer but as an adult. There would be tough choices of events, given her unprecedentedly voluminous areas of specialty.
And there would be – for a swimmer who has the potential to reach heights attained only by swimmers like Phelps and Ledecky who need no first-name attribution – the kind of long-range planning that only such tremendous ability commands.
McIntosh summarily aced her first test and is once again Swimming World’s World Female Swimmer of the Year.
The breakout star of the Paris Olympics won four gold and one bronze medal at the 2025 World Championships in Singapore. She set three world records at Canadian Trials in June, one of the great single-meet performances in history. And she’s done it all with the weight of a target on her back.
McIntosh brought plenty of momentum into 2025. Her exploits in Paris – gold in the 200 butterfly, gold in both individual medleys, silver in the 400 freestyle – made her the meet’s breakout star. She followed it with three golds, one silver and relay bronze at the World Short-Course Championships, setting world records in the 400 free, 200 fly and 400 IM.
Summer McIntosh Photo Courtesy: Emily Cameron
One of McIntosh’s articulated goals in February was to set a pathway toward the Los Angeles Olympics. She has an embarrassing wealth of options: The IMs and 200 fly, obviously, but any freestyle distance from 200 to 800 meters, plus maybe a wildcard like the 200 backstroke, in which she holds the SCM world junior record. She’s looking for five Olympic races, the kind of program that is the province of Michael Phelps and few others.
Part of the process involved a change of scenery for not the first time. The Toronto native decamped after the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 to train with the Sarasota Sharks. All signs this time pointed to Austin, which she visited in March and to which she moved after the World Championships. Entrusting her quest for five gold medals to Bob Bowman, one of the few to oversee such a journey before, was a no-brainer. But her openness to new ideas also led to several months training in Antibes, France, with Fred Vergnoux, a change of pace that paid clear dividends in the summer record onslaught.
McIntosh started the year with a teaser at Sectionals in Florida, setting a best time in the 800 free. She vetted events at a pair of TYR Pro Swim Series stops, sticking with her wheelhouse in Westmont, then the 400 free (and a foreshadowing duel with Katie Ledecky) and 200 back in Fort Lauderdale.
That led to Canadian Trials in Victoria, British Columbia, in June. And that led to carnage on the record board the likes of which has rarely been seen. A world record of 3:54.18 in the 400 free. The third-fastest 800 free time in history in 8:05.07. The world record in the 200 IM at 2:05.70. The second-fastest 200 fly in history, pursing one of the most durable of super-suited records. Then the world standard in the 400 IM at 4:23.65.
Singapore lived up to the racing hype, if for the second straight summer a major meet failed to provide record-board resets. McIntosh began with a showdown with Ledecky in the 400 free. The Canadian was more than two seconds off her trials record, but she controlled the race, steadily pulling away from Ledecky, who slid to third, Li Bingjie’s Asian record getting between.
Next came the 200 IM, a walkover by nearly two seconds, with countrywoman Mary-Sophie Harvey third in a special moment for the Canadian program. McIntosh was .99 seconds off her world record.
The only question in the 200 fly was if Liu Zige’s once untouchable record would vanish. McIntosh, in besting Regan Smith by three seconds, posted the best textile time in history at 2:01.99. But the record’s meaning was obvious in McIntosh’s visible disappointment at the near miss.
There would be more disappointment in the 800 free, however slight. Ledecky, authoring a renaissance in times at age 28, took down her decade-old meet record after having reset the world record in May. They reversed places from the 400 free podium, McIntosh slipping behind the Oceania record of Lani Pallister for bronze. McIntosh’s 8:07.29 was the 10th fastest performance in history.
The capper on the week was a spot of Ledeckyan domination in the 400 IM, McIntosh downing her meet mark from Fukuoka in 2023 by going 4:24.78, 7.5 seconds clear of the field.
McIntosh has only competed once since Worlds, an illness scrubbing her World Cup slate. At the U.S. Open in her new home pool, she made another run at the 200 fly mark with a 2:02.62, plus a best time in the 100 fly to go with dalliances with the 100 breast and 100 back.
The effect of her training with Bowman is yet to be fully revealed. That will wait, likely, for the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships in Irvine. When that arrives, McIntosh will be just 40 miles and less than two years away from the ultimate goal of Los Angeles.
