PARIS – It is turning into a Summer sizzler over here, well on its way to becoming the the greatest display a Canadian Olympian has ever unleashed.
And what a show she is putting on.
Summer McIntosh, the Toronto teenager who is not only unbothered by the pressure on her but in fact seems to thrive on it, showed it yet again on Thursday night at La Defense Arena.
With a simply dominating performance, McIntosh won her second gold medal of these Games by cruising to a win in the 200-metre butterfly and setting an Olympic record of two minutes 03.3 seconds in the process.
It was Canada’s seventh medal of the Games, three of them from McIntosh and four from the surging Canadian swim team.
Leaving from Lane 4, McIntosh was second after 50 metres to defending champ Yufei Zhang of China but had narrowed that gap at the halfway mark and quickly shot to the front through the third lap of the 50-metre pool.
What followed was pure athletic brilliance. With the sellout crowd urging her on, she increased her margin as she reached the wall for the win.
The medal is a glittering complement to the gold McIntosh captured in the 400-metre medley earlier in the week and the silver she snagged in the 400 freestyle to get things started.
And McIntosh is not done yet in her quest to blow away anything previously done by a Canadian at a winter or summer Games.
With medals in three of her four individual events, she can add another on the weekend in the 200 medley, a race she’ll be favoured to win gold. And then there’s relay action, including the 4×200 freestyle that she is scheduled to race the third leg in later on Thursday.
It’s been a sensational coming out party for McIntosh, who came here with high expectations but is on pace to possibly surpass them.
The latest victory made McIntosh the first Canadian woman to win two gold medals at one Olympic Games and the first from her country of either sex to win two at one Summer Games.
With the 200-metre medley still to go, a third gold would surpass the two that speed skaters Marc Gagnon (Salt Lake City, 2002) and Gaetan Boucher (Sarajevo, 1984) as the most by any Canadian in a single Olympics. Factor in the relay events and McIntosh has a shot at matching long track speed skater Cindy Klassen’s five medal performance (one gold, two silver, two bronze) at the 2006 Turin Games.
Many veteran observers are starting to compare McIntosh to American superstar Katie Ledecky, whose win in the 1,500 freestyle on Wednesday was her eighth career Olympic gold. McIntosh has a ways to go to validate those comparisons, but is off to a flying start.
She’s certainly settled into her routine here, getting rest between races, taking care of business in her qualifying heats and cranking it up at night for her finals.
“The first four days of the whole event schedule has been really nice,” McIntosh said of having off days on Sunday and Tuesday following her medal efforts in 400-metre events. “If I was going to write this schedule I’d write it exactly like it is.”
She’d probably write her results pretty much along those lines as well. Her latest medal followed Wednesday’s semi-finals when she swam the fastest time to make her favoured to grab her second gold. In those semis, her time was faster than 2021 gold and silver winners Zhang Yufei and Regan Smith of China respectively.
