Summer Mcintosh will return from the Paris Olympics with four gold medals and one silver.
There was this one small moment, a tiny moment. Summer McIntosh had just swum her 200 IM semifinal; it was the seventh of 12 races she would swim over nine days at these Paris Olympics. Summer was on her way through the mixed zone, but stopped at a television. Teammate Sydney Pickrem was racing in the next semi. Summer watched.
Watched is an understatement, though. You or I watch TV. Seventeen-year-old Summer McIntosh angled her body forward; she stood stock still; her eyes burned. She was a laser. She watched with everything she had.
That’s Summer. That predatory focus, the steely embrace of competition, all hit an apex Saturday night in the 200 individual medley. She had tried to stay with the great Ariarne Titmus in the 400 free; in the 400 IM, she almost swam alone for her first gold; in the 200 fly, she waited until the third leg to take the lead for her second.
In the 200 IM, McIntosh was behind by three-quarters of a body length going into the final 50 metres, and she had to chase down American Kate Douglass like a lean, hungry shark. After touching the wall, Summer smashed the water with her fist before she even looked at the times. She is not just a talent, she is not just a grinder. She is a racer.
“I wouldn’t call it nerves,” Summer said at one point this past week. “Instead of nerves, I just get adrenalin.”
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