It’s been the better part of nine months since Canadian swimming star Summer McIntosh arrived at the University of Texas to join Bob Bowman’s pro training team.
To say it’s an intimidating group of swimmers is an understatement. There’s an argument to be made that this group of athletes in Austin under the guise of Bowman is the best in the world.
McIntosh, Leon Marchard, Hubert Kos, Regan Smith, Simone Manuel are among the stars in the Texas capital of Austin — they are all Olympic champions. McIntosh wondered what it would be like to be the new kid on the blocks diving into this fiercely competitive atmosphere.
“I was terrified about going to Texas because I was just very intimidated and nervous, even though I was very excited at the same time,” she said recently in an interview with CBC Sports.
But in a short amount of time that trepidation has disappeared.
“As soon as I stepped on deck for the first practice, I felt like I fit right in and all of the swimmers were so welcoming to me and that I was very grateful for,” she said. “And I’ve been able to make so many new friendships and meet so many new cool people. Everything’s going well, so it’s just crazy how much can change in a year.”
‘No days off’: Summer McIntosh settles into new training environment with famed coach Bob Bowman
Head down and full steam ahead for McIntosh, now 19, as she continues her pursuit of five individual gold medals at the 2028 L.A. Olympics. The training blocks are intense, with eye-popping mileage in the pool being racked up.
McIntosh is now onto a third coach in as many seasons, having gone from Sarasota with coach Brent Arckey, to France with coach Fred Vergnoux, to now finally being settled in Austin with the legendary Bowman.
“I think if anyone were to come in and watch one single practice, they would see why Bob Bowman is Bob Bowman,” McIntosh said of the American who coached Michael Phelps to an Olympic-record 23 gold medals.
“He just comes on deck every single day. He always has a presence on deck along with the assistant coaches as well. Bob runs the show. His practices are always well thought out from the warm up to the warm down.”
McIntosh acknowledged how challenging it’s been to move through all the changes, the expectations and her continued commitment to try to become the best swimmer ever.
“I’ve grown and matured as a person and I think I’ve also put myself out there and I’ve put myself in maybe more uncomfortable situations where I feel very out of my comfort zone,” McIntosh said. “And that’s when you grow the most for sure.”
McIntosh has had to grow up fast, something that comes with her otherworldly talents.
There were murmurs at pools across the country, and the far reaches of Australia where swimming reigns supreme, five years ago about this young lady from Toronto who was going to be the next great one.
She burst onto the global stage at just 14 years old when she competed at her first Olympics for Canada as the youngest member of the team in Tokyo.
During those first Games for her, she turned heads by finishing fourth in the 400-metre freestyle. It’s now one of the three long-course events in which she holds the world record.
Since then, McIntosh has been on a generational tear. She is now a four-time Olympic medallist — three of which are gold — because of her triumphs in Paris during the 2024 Olympics and is coming off a world championship last summer that saw her become just the second woman ever to win four gold medals at a single meet.
McIntosh has made all of this appear relatively smooth and seamless, including the added media attention, sponsors trying to catch her eye, and the outside world imposing its expectations on the Canadian teen.
But there has been turbulence along the way she has had to navigate, including geographical changes and all of the pressure that comes with being so dominant at such a young age.
For all those growing pains McIntosh says she feels like she can finally take a big, deep breath and sink into her swimming, the thing she loves the most. She’s a relentless trainer and focuses on the details. It’s why she is as dominant as she is.
But getting here, to this place of peace, has been confronting.
“I was basically living out of a suitcase for months and months and months training in France, overseas and stuff that I knew once I got to Austin, I could just let my roots grow there.” she said. “I could actually just relax and really make friends that I’m going to be with for a long time and not going to feel like I have to change coaches anytime soon or things like that.
“And my plans are to stay in Austin as long as Bob’s in Austin sort of thing. So it works out perfectly.”
McIntosh is currently with Bowman and the pro team for an extended training camp at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs — altitude training for three weeks to push the athletes to their limits before settling in for a summer of racing.
Bowman continues to marvel at the Canadian powerhouse and draws parallels between Mcintosh and Phelps in a recent interview with CBC Sports, specifically referencing their intentionality in and out of the pool.
“I think it’s very similar to Michael or even Leon. The coach thing is one part of it. So we have that. But also, her family is rock solid in this. They’re totally invested. They’re supportive but not interfering,” Bowman said.
The people around McIntosh have allowed her to thrive, including her mom, Jill McIntosh, who competed for Canada in swimming at the 1984 Olympics, also in Los Angeles.
“I think when you have that combo very much like Michael — he had a good team around him that sort of helped him deal with distractions and sometimes he failed at that. Sometimes he succeeded. And she will too,” Bowman said. “But I think in general it’s just a learning process. And the better your support system, the easier it is to deal with all of those things, because they will come up.”
Right now, Bowman isn’t really too concerned about making a splash with McIntosh when it comes to breaking world records or posting blistering times. It’s all about process, training extremely hard day in and day out.
The results will come, Bowman says.
“Everything we’re doing is hopefully putting the pieces of the puzzle together for L.A. And part of that is kind of putting a big summer of training here,” he said. “I try to get her to have a better long-term perspective because she’ll get very upset about a short-term thing, which is fine if it kind of changes something you’re doing to get better.”
Rigorous. Unrelenting. Exactly where McIntosh wants to be.
“It can be a bit exhausting at times,” she said, “but that’s how to fuel yourself to keep going and it actually keeps me more motivated, because I know every single time I go to the pool, there’s a purpose to what I’m doing and there’s a reason and there’s a way for me to get better throughout the entire practice.
“There’s definitely no days off. And I think this is the first program where it’s really felt like that.”
For McIntosh, it’s about keeping one eye on the now and one eye on the prize two years from now.
“The training we do now will have a direct impact on what we do in L.A. 2028, and that definitely is the end goal. That’s what Bob is working towards. And that’s what his main focus is,” McIntosh said.
It’s less about the sizzle and more about substance. That said, the past number of summers McIntosh has thrived in the pool, including breaking three world records in the span of five days during the Canadian trials in Victoria last June.
She’ll compete in the upcoming Canadian trials in Montreal in early July. Bowman will be on deck.
But the priority meet in the upcoming months is the Pan Pacific Championship in Irvine, Calif. slated for the middle of August.
“The Pan Pacs are what we’re gearing things towards to kind of give us a really good benchmark at a recovered state where she is,” Bowman said. “And then we can adjust if we need to or decide on events. I mean, the events are kind of what they are. But I wouldn’t rule out good stuff all along the way.”
What they both keep alluding to is that they want to bulletproof McIntosh for the meet of her life at the L.A. Games in what they hope and believe will culminate in five gold medals.
“I rather have amazing training blocks and maybe not taper fully for every single meet because my confidence has always come from my training. And I think Bob has that approach as well,” McIntosh said. “Of course, I also want to race fast, and that’s always the goal as well. But, you know, maybe if I don’t go as fast as I necessarily wanted to at the past meets, I know that I’ll still have many more bumps to come when I do get more rest and better preparation heading into the bigger meets.”
The biggest meet at all is slated for SoFi Stadium at those 2028 Games, where upward of 40,000 fans are going to be gathered each night of swimming finals. The football stadium is being converted to a swimming pool for the Olympics.
McIntosh knows she’ll be walking into a stadium of unrelenting noise and distraction, something she’s learning to welcome.
“I think I feed off the crowd. I mean, in Paris it never really made me nervous. Bob hasn’t talked specifically about the numbers that are going to be attending there, but he always just said if you thought Paris was a lot of people and if you thought Paris was really hard, expect L.A. to be 10 times harder, just the environment,” McIntosh said.
“I think that’s what I feed into and actually what keeps me more motivated. I’ve seen some of the picture mock ups of SoFi Stadium and what it’s going to look like when there’s a pool in there, and I’m just so excited. And I think it’s great that swimming is getting such high viewership, because I think it’s always deserved that.”
With the world watching, McIntosh wants to make history.
She and Bowman know that only happens through the work they put in now.
