Canada’s Gold-Winning Swimmer Summer McIntosh Started ‘Dreaming’ About Win at Age 3

Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh celebrates on the podium at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Nanterre, France, on July 27, 2024. Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne

One of the youngest swimmers to ever compete at the Olympics, Canada’s Summer McIntosh says she has been dreaming about winning since she was 3 years old.

As of July 31, Summer, 17, had won both gold and silver during the Paris 2024 Olympics.

The Toronto resident received the gold in the women’s 400-metre individual medley competition and silver in the 400-metre freestyle on Day 1. They were her first Olympic medals.

“I have been dreaming of this moment since receiving my first swim lesson badge at 3 years old,” she said in a July 30 post on social media.

“It is impossible to express how grateful I am to have always been surrounded by the best, striving towards a common goal. I can truly feel the love and support of my family, friends, teammates, coaches and my country!”

She added that it was an “an incredible honour to wear the Maple Leaf” and that “Team Canada is just getting started!!!”

In the individual medley, Summer won easily with a time of 4 minutes 27.71 seconds. It was nearly six seconds faster than Katie Grimes of the United States, who took silver.

Summer was 14 years old when she attended her first Olympic competition in Tokyo 2020, where she finished fourth place in the 100-metre freestyle.

She has racked up several medals over the years, breaking records along the way.

At the FINA World Aquatics Championships in 2022 and 2023, she took home eight medals, including two golds each year. It earned her the title of the first Canadian swimmer to win four career gold medals at the championships. During the 2022 event, she broke the world junior record in both the 200-metre butterfly and 400-metre individual medley.

At the 2023 Canadian Trials, Summer broke the world records in both the women’s 400-metre freestyle and women’s 400-metre individual medley. Age 16 at the time, she became the first swimmer ever, male or female, to hold world records in both of those events.

Then at the 2024 Canadian Olympic Trials, she broke her own world record in the 400-metre individual medley, taking 1.5 seconds off her previous time. That made her almost two seconds faster than any woman ever in the event.

At the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Summer took home six medals, including two golds. She was the most decorated Canadian athlete at that event.

Having started swimming competitively at 8 years old, in 2014, Summer has wanted to make the Canadian Olympic team since attending the 2016 Olympic trials.

Athleticism runs in the family, as her mother, Jill Horstead, was a Canadian Olympic swimmer and her older sister, Brooke, competed in pairs figure skating at the Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games and the 2022 World Junior Championships.

Summer enjoys other water sports as well, including wakeboarding, water skiing, surfing, and tubing at her family’s cottage.