PARIS – Summer McIntosh belts out the national anthem in both official languages, as she did for each of her three virtuoso gold medal swims here.
Josh Liendo is a proud product of Scarborough, Ont. and remains attached to the roots in his homeland.
Ilya Kharun’s sense of Canadiana is still a work in progress given he was born in Montreal but raised in Las Vegas.
But what do these three, who brought home a combined seven medals from the swimming competition here have in common in their preparations for what turned out to be a successful Paris 2024? All three may have been born in Canada, but they were made in the USA.
With apologies for the catchy description, the first two especially are proud Canadians and learned how to swim, were developed and became elite athletes in their homeland, working primarily at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre. But when it came to reaching their career best, their finishing school was in America.
This is not an indictment on the Canadian system, but rather a reality caused by a confluence of circumstances both before and after the Tokyo Games. And it’s a credit to the versatility of Swimming Canada officials to make it work as some of its top athletes moved elsewhere to train.
“No matter where they are they are Canadian athletes,” Swimming Canada high performance director and national coach John Atkinson said on Sunday as the Paris meet wrapped up. “They’ve been developed by the Canadian program. We want to see them get the best for what they need and actually embrace it and not fight it. Then you keep athletes with you and you keep athletes strong.”
The Canadian swimming exports narrative gained some steam during the nine-day Olympic beat from frumpy U.S.-based observers lamenting the two biggest gold medal winners in Paris – France’s Leon Marchand (with four gold) and Canada’s McIntosh (with three) are based in the U.S. and coached by Americans.
It’s hardly unique to swimming however and much ado about nothing given the nature of high-performance sport.
Why did it happen?
Coming out of the pandemic and the 2021 Tokyo Games, the Canadian program changed significantly in part due to logistics and the departure of Ben Titley as a Toronto-based high performance coach. Titley, who left to coach in Spain, was the primary coach for both McIntosh and Liendo, among others.
“When we came out of the pandemic, a lot of things had been postponed and delayed and events were cancelled,” Atkinson said prior to the Games. “We were very much finding a way for athletes to train on their own for a period of time. We went with the strategy of having the athletes telling us what they wanted to do. The way I describe it is the athletes were very much on their own path and then all paths converge at the Olympic trials and then go on to Paris.
“When you have a team with such quality and high performance you want to do what they need to do and it’s not one size fits all.”
The result was less of a central focus in Toronto, which prompted athletes to explore opportunities that worked best for them.
Endless Summer in Florida
Though McIntosh had great success under Titley’s tutelage, her elite athlete’s mindset is adaptable and her family made sure she’d be under superb guidance. The McIntosh family settled on Brent Arckey, who had a solid track record with the Sarasota Sharks and is seen by many as one of the bright young swimming minds in the U.S. and a coach with a bright future at the national level.
The McIntoshes went all in on the plan, with mother Jill and Summer getting a condo in the Gulf Coast city and training there full time. Jill, a former Canadian Olympian, was certainly aware of the the advantages of being based in Florida, but it’s clear that Summer and Arckey clicked instantly and have a terrific coach-athlete relationship.
By all accounts, Summer has thrived in Sarasota both in her interactions and collaboration with Arckey while also enjoying the club atmosphere with the Sharks. Working with her fourth coach since becoming an elite prospect internationally, she’s incredibly seasoned.
“I think what Summer has been able to do is take things from each coach because they are all different,” said Swimming Canada’s high performance director and national coach, John Atkinson. “Each coach would be able to add different things to that mix. She’s used it as a strength and taken the best from everybody, then being very settled in the work that she’s down with Brent for the last two years.”
The old college try
Though Josh Liendo is far from the first swimmer to go the NCAA route, as three-time Olympic medallist in Tokyo, Maggie Mac Neil, was an All-American at both the University of Michigan and Louisiana State University, the Toronto swimmer is the latest.
Looking for a venue to build on the promise he had shown in his Olympic debut in Tokyo as an 18-year-old, Liendo settled on the University of Florida in Gainesville where he just finished his junior season.
Liendo has thrived under the competitive schedule and working under Gators coach Anthony Nasty — winning four NCAA titles. In 2024, he was named the Southeastern Conference male swimmer of the year.
“It’s just (the opportunity) to train with world class people,” Liendo said following his first Olympic medal on Saturday, a silver in the men’s 100-metre butterfly, when we asked him how Florida aided his development. “It put me in the right situation and obviously the right group for me. Also, I was getting better at the same time. It just all came together at the right time.”
Liendo has talked regularly about his love for racing and how competing makes him better. He clearly thrives on the NCAA calendar and training alongside American great Caeleb Dressel in Florida didn’t hurt either.
“We push each other every day in training,” Liendo said. “We’re competitors, yes, but we’re also teammates.”
Interestingly, Mac Neil has acknowledged that the lack of NCAA competition arrested her progress towards Paris this year. A graduate student at LSU, she had exhausted her NCAA eligibility and wasn’t as race-tested as she normally would be.
The American Canadian
Ilya Kharun is Canadian essentially by passport only, as he was born in Montreal to parents who were circus acrobats and raised him in Las Vegas where they performed for Cirque du Soleil.
Kharun developed in the U.S. — and most rapidly at the Arizona State University — where he was originally recruited by legendary coach Bob Bowman (he of Michael Phelps fame.) Bowman since moved on to the University of Texas, but Kharun won two individual events as the Sun Devils captured it’s first NCAA title this year.
Why it has worked
Atkinson implored his staff to be flexible and accommodating and always to keep the bigger picture in mind. It helps keep athletes happy and motivated while at the same time cultivating the team concept. And it doesn’t matter if they are in Sarasota, Saskatoon, or Sarajevo.
“If you come in with one frame in your head of how things are going to work, it’s not going to work,” Atkinson said on Sunday. “Whether it’s ‘I want everybody at a national centre’ or ‘I want everybody to stay in clubs’ or ‘I want everybody to go to the U.S.’, whichever one you pick it won’t work. You have have to be able and apt in your mind to say athletes will do what’s good for them.”
It has certainly required Atkinson and his Swimming Canada staff to be more nimble in their approach. Some athletes return to U.S. colleges in August. Others report back to their Canadian clubs or travel to Europe for their training.
“It’s quite chaotic, but issues are only issues if you decide they are issues,” Atkinson said. “If you can evolve yourself as a national program, as coaches to embrace what each athlete needs to do, you can support them and not force them to do something they don’t want to do.”