Summer McIntosh vs. Katie Ledecky: Who will win the 2 biggest showdowns at the swimming worlds?

CBC

5 days ago

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Summer McIntosh has an extremely ambitious goal for the upcoming swimming world championships in Singapore.
After winning a Canadian-record three gold medals in four individual events at the Paris Olympics last summer, the 18-year-old phenom now wants to become only the second swimmer in history to win five solo titles at a single long-course world championships. The first was Michael Phelps, who did it in 2007 en route to his iconic eight-gold-medal performance at the Beijing Olympics the following year, which included five individual victories and three relay wins.
"[At the] Olympics, the goal was four golds and I didn't reach that," McIntosh told CBC Sports' Devin Heroux after the Canadian trials in June. "So I was hungry for more."
That's right — before she can even legally order a beer in most provinces, Summer is attempting something that only the greatest swimmer in history has ever achieved. And her chances actually look pretty good after she broke three world records at the trials in Victoria (in the 400m freestyle and the 200m and 400m individual medleys) while coming within a second of two more (in the 200m butterfly and 800m freestyle).
The last swimmer to break three long-course world records at the same meet? Phelps in Beijing. Clearly, Summer is already in rarefied air.
But, in order to match Phelps' record five golds at the world championships, McIntosh will have to defeat another GOAT-level American athlete in not one but two races. That would be Katie Ledecky, the 28-year-old freestyle endurance marvel who owns eight individual Olympic gold medals and 16 individual world titles.
Five of those Olympic golds and 10 of those world titles have come in either the 400m or 800m freestyle. Those are the events where McIntosh and Ledecky will square off in Singapore, and it's safe to say they're the most highly anticipated showdowns of the entire swimming worlds, which open July 26 in Canadian time zones and run through Aug. 3.
"Anytime I get to race Katie, it's a learning experience and it's always a good race," McIntosh told reporters on a conference call from her current training base in France. "I think we bring the best out of each other for sure."
So, who's going to win these races? And what kind of times are these two incredible swimmers capable of laying down?
To try and answer those questions, CBC Sports enlisted the help of Shoreview Sports Analytics to crunch the numbers and formulate predictions for how the Summer vs. Katie showdowns might play out. And to supplement that hard data with some softer, more subjective expertise, I discussed the matchups with my colleague Brittany MacLean Campbell, an Olympic relay bronze medallist who once held the Canadian records in the women's 400m and 800m freestyles and still owns the national 1,500m standard. She's now a swimming analyst for CBC Sports.
Informed by those left- and right-brain analysis, here's a breakdown of the two big races.
Women's 400m freestyle final - Sunday July 27
One of the cool things about this pair of showdowns is that McIntosh and Ledecky will switch roles. In one race, you're the hunter. In the other, you're the hunted.
For the 400m freestyle, McIntosh is the clear favourite after reclaiming the world record at the Canadian trials with a time of 3:54.18, lopping more than a second off the mark set by Australia's Ariarne Titmus at the 2023 world championships.
Titmus went on to win her second consecutive Olympic 400 free gold in Paris and may have been favoured to capture her third world title in Singapore. But the 24-year-old is taking a gap year to recharge for what she says will be her final Olympic Games in 2028. That leaves McIntosh and Ledecky — the Paris silver and bronze medallists, respectively — as the biggest stars in the race, with New Zealand's Erika Fairweather (fourth in Paris) lurking as a potential spoiler.
McIntosh has never won the 400m freestyle world title. She took silver behind Ledecky in 2022, then placed a disappointing fourth in her highly anticipated matchup against Ledecky and Titmus at the 2023 worlds, where Fairweather snuck in for the bronze. At the 2024 Olympics, the 400 free was the only one of McIntosh's four solo races that she did not win.
Ledecky, on the other hand, owns four world titles in the 400m freestyle along with an Olympic gold in 2016, where she set a world record that stood for nearly six years until Titmus broke it in 2022. Ledecky also defeated McIntosh in their most recent 400m matchup, at a star-studded Pro Swim Series stop in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in early May, overtaking the decade-younger Canadian on the final lap and posting her best time since winning the 2016 Olympic gold. It was a stunning return to form for Ledecky, who had appeared to be slowing down a bit in her late 20s (pretty old by elite-swimmer standards).
But then McIntosh, who may have been slowed by an illness in Fort Lauderdale, reaffirmed her status as the world-title favourite with her record-smashing swim at the Canadian trials. Her 3:54.18 performance was even more impressive considering it came pretty early in the season (she's aiming to peak for the worlds) and that no one in that race was capable of pushing her (she won by a ridiculous 13 seconds).
Taking that into account, the Shoreview analytics team believes McIntosh will defeat Ledecky at the world championships by more than a second, which equates to around a body length. Their model's expected range of outcomes for Summer has her going as fast as 3:53.93 (a new world record), with 3:57.48 (good for gold in Paris) representing an average of the best and worst times in her range. The model suggests Ledecky could go as quick as 3:55.21, with an average of 3:58.81.
How does the model arrive at these times? Shoreview co-founder Mike Heenan says the process starts by "simulating 8,000 performance curves based on prior trends and physiological assumptions." Using that information, he simulated the race 20 times and selected one outcome that he thinks properly accounts for the upside apparent in Ledecky's and McIntosh's outstanding swims in May and June while still being mathematically sound. "It's a mix of art and science," he says.
It's also possible that McIntosh blows past the range altogether and obliterates her world record. But Heenan reminds us that statistical models typically don't project such outlier performances — even for someone on Summer's meteoric trajectory. "Trying to predict something that's never happened before is challenging," he says.
MacLean Campbell, our swimming analyst, is a bit bolder than the model. She's confident that McIntosh will clock in somewhere in the 3:53s, breaking the world record, and beat Ledecky by "a second, if not two."
One reason MacLean Campbell is so bullish on Summer in this particular race? Motivation. "This is her biggest test. She's got something to prove here."
Women's 800m freestyle final — Saturday Aug. 2
While McIntosh is the consensus pick in the 400m, Ledecky is favoured in the 800 — her signature event. But this one feels a little more up for grabs.
Ledecky is the undisputed queen of the 800, winning the last four consecutive Olympic gold medals and six straight world titles. (Let's all agree to ignore the superfluous 2024 world championships, which most of the best swimmers skipped in an Olympic year). The American has maintained the world record since 2013 and, just when it seemed she might be past her prime, she lowered her nine-year-old standard of 8:04.79 from the Rio Olympics to 8:04.12 at the same Fort Lauderdale meet back in May where she beat McIntosh in the 400.
Summer, meanwhile, is venturing out of her comfort zone. She swam the 800 at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, when she was just 14 years old, but did not advance past the qualifying heats. Despite defeating Ledecky in Florida prior to the 2024 Olympics — Ledecky's first 800m loss in 14 years — McIntosh did not include the 800 in her program for Paris. But she included it in her push for five golds at the world championships after an electrifying performance at the Canadian trials, where she laid down a 8:05.07. That's the third-fastest time in history and less than a second off Ledecky's world record.
Ledecky, though, still owns 10 of the top 11 times ever, and her endurance bona fides are unassailable. She's won a pair of Olympic golds and five world titles in the 1,500m (pool swimming's longest distance) along with her massive collection of 800m golds. But McIntosh, to her credit, sought out this showdown.
"One of the many reasons I picked the 800 [for the worlds] is because in my opinion it is the biggest challenge," she said. "Katie is so strong and in her top form this season, so that matchup will be awesome."
Ledecky has been so good for so long that it's hard to pick against her in the 800. But Summer is still on the rise, and she had what she called the "best meet of my career" at the Canadian trials after she began working with French coach Fred Vergnoux. His group does pool training on the Riviera, where he's helped McIntosh build up her endurance for the 800, and altitude camp at a mountain ski resort, where he had her try cross-country skiing for the first time.
"Fred has been absolutely incredible," said McIntosh, who lights up whenever she talks about him. "We've only been together for a few months now, but we've sparked up a relationship so quickly and bonded amazingly. He's such an amazing coach and he has really taken me to the next level in the sport."
The feeling is mutual. "What makes the difference between [Summer] and the rest is that she never has an off day," Vergnoux told MacLean Campbell recently. "She's just embracing every single session to become better, and that's pretty unique."
The tricky thing about predicting the 800m is there's not as much high-quality data to work with. McIntosh has only raced it a handful of times.
For that reason, the Shoreview team decided to use what co-founder Ryan McDonnell refers to as "partial pooling" — in other words, a shared model between the two swimmers. This resulted in some pretty conservative time projections, but it also points to a doozy of a race. If we go by the average of their expected ranges, the model has Ledecky winning by less than a quarter of a second (8:06.10 to 8:06.34). By fastest time, it's even closer: Ledecky by just seven hundredths (8:01.24 to 8:01.31).
Looking at those projections, MacLean Campbell thinks the fastest times might be a little ambitious given that the 800m final will happen on the second-last day of a gruelling meet for both swimmers. At the same time, she suspects the average is too slow and that, going head-to-head, McIntosh and Ledecky will push each other into the "8:03 or 8:04 range" and touch the wall within about a half second of each other — still incredibly close for such a long race.
But maybe we'll give the last word to Vergnoux, who had a bold prediction when Brittany interviewed him for a recent episode of her swimming talk show, The Ready Room. The question at hand was whether McIntosh is capable of breaking Ledecky's 800m world record of 8:04.12
"I think Summer can go under eight minutes," her coach said. "No question."
How to watch the swimming world championships
As part of CBC Sports' ongoing coverage of the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, you can watch every swimming race — prelims and finals — live on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem. The finals begin at 7 a.m. ET each day, starting July 27. Here's the full streaming schedule.
Summer McIntosh is expected to swim in these five individual finals:
July 27: 400m freestyle
July 28: 200m medley
July 31: 200m butterfly
Aug. 2: 800m freestyle
Aug 3: 400m medley
She's also expected to take part in some relays, though those are not set in stone.