The Decibel - The secrets of Summer McIntosh’s Olympic success

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Expectations were high for 17-year-old Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh coming into the Paris Olympic Games. After all the races were said and done, she won a medal in each of the four individual races she competed in: silver in the 400-metre freestyle, gold in the 400-metre individual medley, gold in the 200-metre butterfly and gold in the 200-metre individual medley. These wins make Summer the first Canadian swimmer to win four individual medals at an Olympics and the first Canadian woman to win three individual gold medals at a single Games.Grant Robertson has been watching Summer win from the La Défense Arena in Paris. He explains how Summer approached the Olympics, why she is so dominant and who else made it to the podium on the Canadian swimming team.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

I think the race that really grabbed me when watching all of Summer McIntosh's races at these Olympics was the 400-meter individual medley. Grant Robertson has been covering Olympic swimming in Paris for the Globe. That was the race she came into the Olympics with the world record in. And it was the race really where she came in with the biggest target on her back. And so you had noise,

you had pressure, and yet, at the start of a swim race, the sound drops out and it gets eerily quiet. Then you hear the bang and the swimmers go and it gets loud again. And the noise as the race went on just kept getting louder and louder and louder. To see her not only execute that race, but win it in such a dominating fashion, right off the blocks, she went into first place and she never really gave up that position at all. This was the first gold medal that 17-year-old Summer McIntosh won for Canada. In total, Canada won eight medals from the indoor swimming events, four of them by summer. It was remarkable to watch because it was one of those moments where you look at this athlete and you say,

this person is different. So today, Grant gives us an inside look at Summer's success and how Team Canada managed to win so many medals in the pool at the Olympics. I'm Rachel Levy-McLaughlin, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Grant, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So it does feel like Summer McIntosh is kind of the Canadian star of these Olympics. And I know you've been following her career for a while.

You've talked to her, her parents, her coach. And so before we sort of get into the details of her performance in Paris, let's just take a step back and talk a little bit about her. So how did she get into swimming? Her mom is a swimmer. Her mom swam at the 1984 Summer Olympics. But her mom was careful not to push the kids into swimming. You know, just because she competed didn't mean that Summer or her sister Brooke necessarily had to compete. But, you know, like most kids, Summer learned to swim.

And then, you know, she swam in the lake at her cottage and in the backyard pool and then took to competing. And what I find really interesting about Summer's personality from getting to talk to her quite a bit is she also was in figure skating at a young age. But she didn't like judge sports. She liked the black and white of a clock. You know, either win or you lose. There's no question. There's no gray area. She loved being under the magnifying glass of swimming. She talks about, you know, having nowhere to hide. And so she really, I think, took to the sport because of what makes swimming so pressure packed, which is an interesting facet of her personality.

And she started competing in swimming when she was really young, right? She did. She started getting serious about swimming as young as, you know, seven years old and really started to emerge as a high-end talent on Swimming Canada's radar at about age 12 because she was exceptionally good at endurance races, you know, the middle distances and the longer distances. And when she went to Tokyo, she swam the 400 meter freestyle, which is a middle distance, almost made it on the podium as a 14 year old. And that really set her up for these Olympics because she really honed her middle distances since then. And she came in as one of the world's best in Paris.

And that first medal that Summer won, this was sort of dubbed the race of the century. Can you tell me about sort of the significance of the medal in that race? Yes, that race, the 400 meter freestyle, which kicked off the Olympics on the first night of competition, was called the race of the century because what you had there was the past three world record holders going up against each other in one race, which is exceedingly rare. So you had Ariane Titmuss, the Australian swimmer, you had the US's Katie Ledecky, and you had Summer McIntosh. And then you had a fourth swimmer in there from New Zealand. And together, they are the four swimmers who have gone under four minutes in that race, four of the five in history to do it. The fifth one is retired. So you had this collection of

talent that you may never get in one pool again, or for a very long time. That's why they were calling it the race of the century. It wasn't about how close the race should be. It was, will we ever see names like this and three world record holders together in one pool? And what the term race of the century is a reference to is the race of the century on the men's side that happened in 2004, when you had Australian legend Ian Thorpe, one of the best swimmers ever. You had Dutch swimmer Peter van den Hoogenband, also a legend in the sport. And you had a young Michael Phelps all going head to head in the 200 meter freestyle. Thorpe won it. Phelps came bronze.

And Phelps went on to become himself the greatest swimmer on the men's side ever. So what I found interesting about this is the women's side finally got a version of that, because there's been talk for years about when would women's swimming get a race of the century. And I think we got that in Paris. I'm curious about some of the sort of the behind the scenes aspects of the Olympics that you got to see. So what's happening before the swimmers come out onto the pool deck before race? The ready room. The ready room is one of my favorite aspects of the pool because it's where you see the most tension, the most nerves. You see a bit of

gamesmanship going on in there. One of my favorite questions to ask swimmers is what's your favorite ready room story or what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen in the ready room because it's basically this you know it's the size of a bedroom it's this area where they gather all of the swimmers who are about to race together and you have to stand there next to your competitors and so a lot of the times you'll see them you know standing quietly some will have headphones on listening to music uh some will be you know trying to psych themselves up, regular stuff like that. But sometimes you see very strange things. I've heard stories about swimmers, you know, going to the corner and screaming at the wall to psych themselves up.

Oh, wow. Mark Tewksbury told me a hilarious story. I said, what's the weirdest thing you ever saw? And he said, easy. When he swam to a gold medal in 1992, he was up against two American swimmers. And he said the American swimmers stood directly in front of him and talked about him like he wasn't there. They said, well, we don't think Mark looks good today. Yeah, I think Mark's going to swim very terribly today. And this is the former Canadian Olympic swimmer. That's right. Yeah, he won gold for Canada in 92.

And so, you know, right before the race, they're kind of passively aggressively trying to just psych him out. And he said it only served to inspire him even more. And he went out and won that race. And it's a legendary race in Canadian swimming. You know, at the Paris Olympics, I think the ready room was a little more subdued. It looked a little more professional. I did notice Summer McIntosh's body language in that room. She sort of stood there a lot of times just with her hands on her hips, focusing forward. And to me, it looked like somebody who was ready to go. She was focused all Olympics. Her focus in Paris was remarkable. I asked her afterward if she was ever nervous during any of the races. And she said, I was nervous before the first one on the first night.

But after that one, I didn't feel nerves. And so, you know, looking back on her demeanor in the ready room, I think you saw that focus and that resolve. And what about during the race? Like, do you have any sort of insight on what they're thinking about while the race is actually happening? A lot of them are counting their strokes and, you know, because they want to time how close they are to the wall to get the right turn. But what I love asking swimmers is, who swim the individual medley, about what they're thinking about during the race because

there's a lot going on in that that race in particular because you deploy all four strokes the backstroke the butterfly the breaststroke and the freestyle so swimmers say you have to keep your wits about you because every swimmer is good at one stroke and they've got a stroke that's weaker so you know when if you're, you may not be ahead the next length. So they're constantly paying attention to where everybody is. Meantime, they're also trying to count their own strokes and make sure that they're executing each leg of that race. And then at the wall, you turn and you essentially start a new race with a new stroke. And I talked to Marianne Limpert, who won silver for Canada in the 200 IM in 1992. She's one of our greatest IMers ever. And she said she would always say a

word for every stroke in her head. So, you know, she'd say tempo, tempo, tempo. Or when she got to the freestyle, it was just go, go, go. And that's how she got through those races. Cool. And what about recovery from these races? Because, you know, Summer McIntosh, for example, ended up racing four individual events and three relays in just over a week. So, you know, there's not much downtime. Recovery was the big story of these Olympics for Summer McIntosh.

She raced 13 competitions in nine days. I had it all up. She swam about three kilometers in Paris, if you put all of her races end to end. On two of those nights, there was very little time in between her races. One night, there was 40 minutes between two of Summer McIntosh's races for a medal. And so in that short amount of time, she had to get out of the pool, debrief the race with her coach, try to cool down, try to get a massage so she doesn't cramp up. You know, normally they might change racing suits between a race. She didn't have time for that. At one point, we saw her sort of run by because she didn't have time to stop and talk to anybody. And then she had to go to the cool down pool. And then she had to get on her Team Canada track suit so she could get on the podium to

accept a medal because she was winning so many medals. And then she had to get out of that track suit, go to the ready room, meet up with her teammates for the relay. It was remarkable to see somebody try to, you know, get out of the pool and recover that quickly and then get back in the pool and immediately compete again. But stepping back from that, you know, her recovery outside of the pool, that was almost a competition that was as important as what was going on inside the pool, because her job was get back to the athlete's village as quickly as possible. And as she said, she was doing nothing but eating and sleeping when she was away from the pool.

She had to get as much sleep as possible. Swimmers burn a ton of calories, so she's always trying to get food into her. And so basically, you know, to ask Summer McIntosh what she did in Paris, she would say, swim, eat, and sleep, which is kind of hilarious to think about. We'll be right back.

Let's talk about the mental side of these races, because I imagine there's a lot of pressure. So how does Summer McIntosh, she's only 17 years old, how does she sort of handle that pressure of the expectations around the Olympics? That was the big question coming in, because you could see there was a swimmer who's 17 years old with so many expectations on them. You know, she had a world record. Everybody knew she was world-class. Everybody was gunning for her. And she's so young. And one of the things that I found really fascinating was watching her handle that pressure. She started the Olympics very serious. And she'd say, well, I'm just focused on the task at hand. And, you know, at certain points was almost very robotic,

which is not her personality away from the pool. She's a regular teenager. She likes to talk about her cats. She likes to go shopping. Her and her sister like to stream movies on, you know, on their laptop and talk about pop culture. Right. But at the pool, she was only about her races. And that's how she handled the pressure was just compartmentalizing everything and just focusing on what happens in the water. But an interesting thing happened. After she got her first race out of the way, the silver medal, she started to loosen up a little bit. Then she had her big medleys coming. And then she got a gold and then she got another gold. And by the time she got

to the end of the week, we started to see her shoulders drop a little bit. And we started to see her smile more, which was interesting because she was so focused throughout the week that, you know, it was almost like she didn't want to break her concentration. But by the end of the week, you know, she was sort of like laughing a little bit. And one of the quotes that really stuck out was she going into her final race, she described it as bittersweet because she said, I'm having such a good time in Paris. This is kind of bittersweet that this is my last race. And that to me was a complete shift from her early on. So obviously, you know, Summer McIntosh is just one of the swimmers on the team. So who else stood out to you in the pool during these Olympics?

There are two swimmers that really jumped out at me at these Olympics, in addition to Summer McIntosh. The first one is Kylie Moss, 28-year-old backstroke specialist, one of the best swimmers that we've had in Canada, and somebody who's credited with really turning around the Canadian swimming program, starting in about 2016, when Canada started winning a lot of medals at the pool. There were questions surrounding Moss about, you know, in her third Olympics, could she come in and contend again? And she answered that with a bronze medal in the 200 backstroke, giving her five medals, which is amazing when you think about it. You know, Penny Oleksiak is Canada's most decorated Olympian at seven medals,

and Moss now has five. And she kind of flies under the radar for being one of the kind of all-time greats in the sport. And so to see her get that medal in what may be her last Olympics was quite impressive to see, just the consistency that that athlete has been able to put forth over the years. The other swimmer that really jumped out at me, well, there were two on the men's side. Josh Leendo, who's considered the sort of future of men's swimming in Canada, and the guy who was really leading the hope for a breakthrough of men's swimming in Paris, getting a silver medal in the 100-meter butterfly on the men's side. That was a real statement. And for also Ilya Karun to get bronze in that same race, first time ever, the two men have stood on the podium together in swimming in the history of the Olympics, which is remarkable. And the funny backstory of that is their roommates at the Athletes' Village. So Karun actually broke the medalist streak for the men a few nights

earlier in the 200-meter butterfly. And so they're sitting around in the room talking, and they're kind of musing about, what if we both got on the podium in the 100? Now, Leandro's favored, and Karun was an outside shot. You can sort of imagine them being like, yeah, that would be a great idea. Why don't we do that? And then when Karun touched the wall in that race, he said he turned around, and he looked in disbelief that he had actually done it and Canada had gone 2-3 in that race so after

years of the men coming up short their breakthrough at this Olympics I think was pretty significant and Leando is the guy sort of leading that sort of renaissance of men's swimming in Canada. They leave these Olympics with three medals, which is big for them. And he's the future for the 28th LA Olympics. So Canada sort of has all these really great swimmers now. I'm curious how we sort of got to this point. Like how did Canada build up all of this swimming talent? It's a really good question because it seems like we've gotten really good really fast in swimming, doesn't it? Really, if you look at where we're at now in Canadian swimming, it began to change in about 2013 when the high performance director John Atkinson shows up in Canada and decides to really make the program more sophisticated and really start identifying talent and developing talent, I think, more than we had been doing in Canada previously

and building depth in the program. But it's not just about planning necessarily that made them good. They've also had the luck of seeing generational talents materialize. So around 2015, you get Kylie Masse, one of the best backstrokers ever in Canada emerge. You get Penny Oleksiak, you know, show up on the scene and just destroy the Rio Olympics with, you know, four medals like seemingly out of nowhere. And then, you know, in Tokyo, you have Maggie McNeil winning gold. At that point, that was the ninth gold medal Canada had won in the history of swimming. And yet they had a problem

on the men's side. The men's side was really lagging because men take longer to develop in swimming. They tend to get really good in their 20s, but you still have to develop their technique as teenagers. And so that's about identifying talent and then growing that talent. So in more recent years, we've seen them really try to target young swimmers on the men's side that they can grow into Olympians. And Josh Leando is a great example of that. They really started turning him into a future Olympian at age 14 and 15. And overall, sort of how effective would you say Canada's swim team was at these Olympics? You know, going into the games, there was a sense we could compete for a decent number of medals. We ended up with eight, three gold, two silver, three bronze. So was this a successful Games for swimming?

I think they can declare it a success, but right within the window of the bar they were probably setting for themselves. So going in, they said, well, we're hoping to get six-plus medals. And the reason they chose that number is because they won six medals in Rio and six medals in Tokyo. So they said six-plus in Paris is a success. Now, Canada came into these Olympics with probably the deepest swimming team we've ever had, the most talent. And so possibly they might have expected more than eight. And I think they did. Where they came up short was

in the relays. And that was really surprising. Canada has always been good for a couple of medals in the team relays. At the past two Olympics, we've got two medals and relays at each one. And they were absolutely expecting a few in those. And it was kind of a bit of a heartbreak for two reasons, because medals in the relays would have been historic for Canada. Had one of the women's relays won a medal, you probably would have seen Summer McIntosh get a fifth medal. That would have tied her for most in a single Olympics by a Canadian. That record's held by Cindy Klass in the speed skater. Five in one Olympics, very difficult to do. Summer would have tied that had the relays gotten on the podium. They came fourth in two races. So close.

The other historic medal would have been Penny Oleksiak was part of the relay team. Her historic count of seven medals would have risen to eight. And, you know, these Olympics might be Penny's last best shot at getting on the podium. And so I think the relay problems they saw in Paris would be a disappointment for them. So just to end here, Grant, I want to come back to Summer McIntosh. So now that the races are done in Paris, what's next for her? That's interesting.

She's about two weeks away from her 18th birthday. So she's flying home this week and she's going to go to her cottage in Ontario, where she's going to celebrate her birthday with her friends and some of her teammates from Florida, where she trains, are coming up. And from what I gather, the guest list for that birthday party is growing by the minute. They're going to have a lot to celebrate. Now, what might get in the way of that birthday celebration is the fact that she's most likely going to be called back to Paris to carry the flag into the closing ceremonies for Canada. Now, the Canadian Olympic Committee likes to be coy all the time and not indicate who they're choosing for that until they actually announce it. But I don't think there's any other choice in this case, given the Olympics she's just had.

So that might interrupt the birthday celebrations. Summer McIntosh also has to finish high school she's she's two courses short and her mom was saying that she was really stressed out in April that she wasn't going to be graduating at the normal time and you know that she uh she had to get these two courses and her mom had to say like you know Summer it's okay if the Olympics coming up, you know, maybe do those courses in the fall. So that's that's what's next on her plate. And then she'll be going back down to Florida to where she trains with her team in Sarasota and and, you know, starting preparations for the next Olympics. Grant, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for following all this wing for us. Thanks. Thank you so much.

That's it for today. I'm Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. This episode was edited by Kevin Sexton. Our producers are Madeline White and Michal Stein. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening.