Meet the teenager that threatens to spoil the Aussie girls’ golden party
A YOUNG woman on a mission? Or a glutton for punishment?
Canada’s rising swim sensation Summer McIntosh could be a bit of both. If the experts are right, the 15year-old is on her way to becoming the next big thing in women’s swimming — even that means gatecrashing the pool party for Australia’s golden girls.
From a swimming family, McIntosh’s mother Jill Horstead swam for
Canada at the Los Angeles Olympics, and her teenage daughter is already so highly regarded in the sport that the Australian swimwear maker Funkita has signed her up as a global ambassador. McIntosh’s best is still yet to come but she has already made a massive splash in the sport, chasing home Ariarne Titmus and Katie Ledecky at the Tokyo Olympics when she was 14.
She just won two individual gold medals at last month’s world championships — all before she’s old enough to get a driver’s licence — and she’s about to take the plunge at the Commonwealth Games.
Her clash with Titmus in the 400m freestyle is building up as one of the biggest blockbuster races in Birmingham. Titmus has already beaten McIntosh once — and easily — by almost six seconds in Tokyo when she was preoccupied fighting off Ledecky for the gold.
Impressively, ‘Arnie’ has improved her best time by 0.19 seconds in the past year to claim Ledecky’s world record but it’s not the American who looms as her biggest threat going forward; It’s the pint-sized Canadian who has carved more than three seconds off her best time in the last 12 months and is closing in quick. In an exclusive interview, McIntosh revealed she had learnt a lot from watching and racing against Titmus and was now better prepared.
“I‘m just really excited to race her again since it’s been a while since the Olympics and I was obviously quite far behind so it wasn’t much of a race.