Summer Mcintosh stuns swimming with second world record in five days

Summer Mcintosh has left the swimming world gobsmacked after breaking her second world record in five days at the Canadian national trials. The 16-year-old broke the 400m individual medley record on Saturday after taking Ariarne Titmus' record in the 400m freestyle on Tuesday.

The teenager won Saturday's race in four minutes, 25.87 seconds in her home city of Toronto. She smashed the old world mark of 4:26.36 set by Katinka Hosszu of Hungary at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

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"It's amazing to have all my family and friends in the stands, cheering me on," she said after the race. "It really helped me in the last hundred metres.

"Obviously it's really amazing and I'm really happy to get another world record. Right now I'm just thinking about my legs. They hurt so bad.

"The 400 IM is one of the toughest events out there so going into tonight I just tried to mentally prepare for that. Whatever the time was the time would be."

McIntosh had earlier broken the world record in the 400m freestyle on the opening night of the meet on Tuesday. Her time of 3:56.08 eclipsed the mark of 3:56.40 set in May last year by Australian star Titmus.

The 16-year-old is now the first person in history to hold long-course world records in both the 400 IM and 400 free. She's also the first Canadian since Alex Baumann in 1984 to set two long-course world records, and first Canadian woman since Elaine Tanner in 1967.

The teenager, who trains in Florida, just missed out on setting the world record in the 200 individual medley on Thursday. She won in 2:06.89, just off the world mark of 2:06.12.

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McIntosh also won the 200 butterfly on Friday in 2:04.70, after winning the 200m fly and 400m medley at the World Championships in Budapest last year. On Saturday she fell behind world record pace after the penultimate breaststroke leg of the medley final, but rallied in the closing freestyle leg.

"In the freestyle I always like to look at the clock and I think I saw 26.1 or something and I thought, just go, go crazy," she said. "I just gave it everything I've got and I knew it would be close."

The trials are Canada's qualifying meet for the world championships in July in Japan. Titmus will undoubtedly be looking to get her world record back in the 400m, while American legend Katie Ledecky will also be out to take them both down.

"Certainly having your own world record broken is a tough pill to swallow," Titmus told Channel Nine's Sports Sunday program. "But I think you have to look at the good in everything and it's probably a good thing it was broken now. It gives me a little bit of fire in the belly."

Titmus said the prospect of taking on McIntosh and Ledecky next year at the Paris Olympics was exciting. "I think it's naive to think that the world of swimming is going to stop - it's exciting for our sport, it's exciting for the 400 freestyle," Titmus said.

"I think the match-up between Summer, Katie (Ledecky) and I is just going to be as strong as ever in Paris. Time is flying. It's only a year and a half away. It's exciting for the sport."

with agencies

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