McIntosh wins fourth gold, medley double for Marchand

BBC News

4 days ago

Olympic champions Summer McIntosh and Leon Marchand claimed gold medals in the women's and men's 400m individual medley at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.Teenager McIntosh won her fourth gold medal of the week as she finished more than seven seconds clear of silver medallist Jenna Forrester on Sunday with a championship record time of 4 minutes 25.78 seconds.Earlier this week, the 18-year-old took gold in the 400m freestyle, 200m butterfly and 200m medley, as well as bronze in the 800m freestyle on Saturday.McIntosh - who holds world records in both the 200m and 400m medley and the 400m freestyle - won three gold medals and a silver at her first Olympics last summer.Great Britain's Freya Colbert came last after qualifying for the final as the eighth-best swimmer in the heats.
Frenchman Marchand scraped through in the men's 400m medley heats with a sluggish performance, but recovered to win gold in 4:04:73 - almost four seconds ahead of silver medallist Tomoyuki Matsushita.The 23-year-old Paris Games hero set a new world record in winning gold in the men's 200m individual medley on Thursday, but was two seconds shy of breaking the 400m world record he set at the 2023 World Championships.Max Litchfield finished seventh, capping a disappointing week for Team GB. Marchand later helped France take silver in the men's 4x100m medley relay, as Team GB finished sixth.The USA set a new world record in the women's 4x100m medley relay with a time of 3:49.34, while Britain came last.There was a gold medal for Tunisia's Ahmed Jaouadi in the men's 1500m freestyle, adding to the 20-year-old's triumph in the 800m freestyle earlier this week.Olympic silver medalist Meg Harris won the women's 50m freestyle, while Lithuania's Ruta Meilutyte retained her 50m breaststroke with a time of 29.55.Kliment Kolesnikov won gold in the men's 50m backstroke with 23:68, though he fell more than a second short of the world record he set three years ago.In the final diving event of the week, Britain's Robbie Lee came 12th in the men's 10m platform as Cassiel Rousseau of Australia took gold.
Brigh future for GB after tough week
Great Britain enjoyed a difficult week in Singapore, winning just five medals, including one gold.While illness has caused issues in the camp, GB's performance director Chris Spice does not want that to be an excuse."We don't try to dwell on that. You only have to look at some of our relay selections in the last couple of days to see some of the people who might have been affected by that," he told BBC Sport."We're not staying close to other teams, we've tried to minimise the risk of transferring anything between teams."But of course you're in a heated environment with people all close to each other. It's natural that there is going to be some illness around. That's what it is. We just put our heads down and try and get on with it."There has been a lot of change both in the water and behind the scenes for British Swimming, something Spice felt contributed to an underwhelming week."We've had three British records here as opposed to two last year. Underneath the bonnet, things aren't bad," he added."We think we've got the best crop of juniors we've had in the last four or five years. Hopefully as we get towards LA [2028 Olympic Games], those two things will come together and the results will start to come."We've got a very young team, we've got eight people here at their first World Championships. There are a lot of newbies, there is a lot of learning going on. "There were missed opportunities this week, we left two or three medals on the table."We've got a new head coach, a new team manager. The head of sports science and medicine has gone across to diving. We're all learning about each other and need time to bed in."