By: Jingwei Zhao
There has long been a rivalry known to the public that Katie Ledecky and Ariarne Titmus are competing to see who is the best at swimming. However, 15-year-old superstar Summer McIntosh may join the contest. Ariarne Titmus didn’t attend this year’s FINA World Championship, leaving Katie Ledecky to take the gold medal. Ledecky’s main goals of the swim meet were to just improve her time (better known as dropping) in the 400-meter freestyle and take gold, which she successfully achieved. During an interview, she told a reporter that she “wanted to push to the point of pain tonight.” Although she swam up to her expectations with a 3:58:15, it was unexpected that the silver medalist was only a second away from her time and a sub-4 minute.
Summer McIntosh is a rising Canadian swimmer who has recently made an appearance at the FINA World Championships. Her time of 3:59:39 made her the fourth woman in history to go under 4 minutes for the event and the current youngest to ever do so. It is speculated that McIntosh will take a top 3 in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Ledecky has also recognized McIntosh’s talent which she stated “I was a little nervous. (McIntosh) hung in there the whole time, so she definitely pushed me a lot.”
Despite the challenges Ledecky faced, she dominated in other events such as the 1500-meter freestyle. Her U.S. teammates did well, such as Leah Smith, who won bronze in the event. Bobby Finke also won the 800-meter freestyle finals and took the gold. However, who would have known what may have happened if Titmus joined the 400-meter freestyle with Ledecky and McIntosh. She had a solid reason why she didn’t attend the championships. She went to the July Commonwealth Games and won 3 gold medals with a new world record. Still, it would have been a challenge for her to race against Ledecky since Ledecky built extra motivation before the championships due to switching coaches for Anthony Zesty. I guess that we would only be able to see the two compete against each other in the 2024 Paris Olympics!