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Canadian swimmers Summer McIntosh and Sydney Pickrem have advanced to the semifinals of the women’s 200-metre individual medley at the Olympic Games in Paris.
Kharun, Liendo, Pickrem also off to semis; Canada in mixed 100m medley relay final The Canadian Press
· Posted: Aug 02, 2024 6:45 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 minutes ago
Canada’s Summer McIntosh, pictured in the women’s 200-metre medley heat on Friday at La Defense Arena, has won a pair of gold medals and silver at the Paris Olympics. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)In the heavy-lifting portion of her Olympic swim schedule, what Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh does out of the water is as important as what she does in it to add to her medal haul in Paris.
A mere 15 hours after claiming her second gold medal and third medal of the Olympic Games, the Toronto teenager was back in the pool Friday working on more history-making hardware in the 200-metre individual medley heats.
McIntosh advanced to the evening’s semifinals with the fastest time among 34 women. Teammate Sydney Pickrem also advanced with the fourth-best time. The final is Saturday.
“It’s all about outside of the pool right now,” McIntosh said. “I know once I dive in, I’m good, but it’s really important to recover as best as possible in between these races.”
The 17-year-old had a day off after her 400-metre freestyle silver on opening night and another after her dominating victory in the 400-metre medley Monday, but it’s been two-a-day races since then.
WATCH l McIntosh wins women’s 200m butterfly gold in Olympic record time:
Summer McIntosh breaks an Olympic record to claim her 2nd gold medal in ParisToronto’s Summer McIntosh won the women’s 200-metre butterfly title, capturing her second gold and third medal overall at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Anticipating her insertion into a women’s medley relay final Sunday could mean as many as eight races for the 17-year-old her over the last five days, and up to 13 over the entire nine days of swimming.
“It almost feels like a job to recover some times because it does take a lot of energy to figure out what’s going to be the best recovery possible,” McIntosh said.
The two-time world champion in the 200-metre butterfly captured Olympic gold in it Thursday.
She also anchored the 4x200m freestyle relay team to fourth later in the evening, which further shortened her recovery time for Friday’s 200 I.M. preliminaries.
WATCH l McIntosh talks about winning her 2nd gold:
Watch Summer McIntosh’s interview after winning her 2nd gold medal at Paris 202417-year-old Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh became the first Canadian woman to win multiple individual gold medals at a Summer Olympic Games after her victory in the 200-metre butterfly.
“I always come back to she’s a 17-year-old girl. Managing all this and doing it day after day, it’s not an easy thing,” said her coach Brent Arckey. “As far as the times and stuff, these are things that we’ve talked about doing, but managing the whole thing is probably the hardest thing to do.
“We’re trying to get to the end of this thing and then we’ll be able to take the deep breath.”
Arckey says McIntosh has rehearsed her Paris pace in training.
“When you have eight, nine or 10 practices a week, maybe you’re coming off of a swim meet and you’re doing something fast afterwards. You have all these opportunities to get up and rehearse high-performance efforts over and over and over again,” he explained.
“That’s just setting up a chaotic situation and teaching somebody to achieve in those situations.”
McIntosh had no complaints about her Olympic race schedule.
“The whole event schedule is really nice and kind of lines up with . . if I were if I were to write (it) I would write it exactly how it is to be honest,” she said. “It’s really nice because I’ve had two days off right after both my four hundreds.
“Trying to treat every day like the first day of meet. Try to keep in the zone as much as possible.”
The latter requires limiting social media exposure and time with her family, as well as a lot of eating and naps.
“It’s a lot more simple than probably people think behind the scenes,” McIntosh said. “All I’m doing is eating and sleeping.
“Just trying to sleep as much as possible even though it’s hard after all the adrenalin and excitement, along with eating as much as possible and just kind of letting your mind take a rest as well.
“All those things add up over time, like once you get to Day 9 of a meet, it’s still trying to feel as fresh as possible.”
She prides herself on her sleeping talent.
“Any swimmer can attest to being a good napper. It’s kind a skill you learn doing two-a-days (workouts) all the time,” McIntosh said.
“Usually my practices are at 5 a.m., so I usually nap for like three hours after them, so definitely am a professional napper at this point.”
Canada’s Sydney Pickrem competes in a heat of the women’s 200-metre individual medley at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Friday. (Associated Press)Pickrem wins late battle with U.S. rivalAfter failing to advance to the eight-woman 200 breaststroke final by one spot on Wednesday, Pickrem led Rebecca Meder of South Africa by 51-100ths through that leg of Friday’s medley.
Then, Pickrem waged a battle with American Kate Douglass late in the freestyle and emerged victorious in 2:10.63, 7-100ths faster than the 2021 Olympic bronze medallist.
It was a measure of revenge for Pickrem, who was second to Douglass by 1.51 seconds in February while setting a 2:08.56 PB in the medley final at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Qatar.
“You don’t want to go 100 per cent [in the heats], you want to save your energy [for the semifinals] but you gotta do something to put yourself in a position to advance,” said MacDonald. “Sydney Pickrem did that.
“A nice, easy, relaxed butterfly [leg]. It wasn’t quite with the leaders but [she] moves up really well in the backstroke, a stroke she’s been working on to get better at.”
Pickrem, 27, is a dual Canadian-American citizen who was born in Florida and whose family is from Halifax. In September, she will move to West Virginia to work in coaching.
Toronto’s Josh Liendo and Montreal’s Ilya Kharun were first and second in their heat and moved onto the men’s 100-metre butterfly semifinals with the second and fifth fastest qualifying times respectively.
Canada’s mixed medley relay team of Maggie Mac Neil, Taylor Ruck, Apollo Hess and Blake Tierney advanced to Saturday’s final with the sixth-fastest time.
Liendo was also scheduled to race in the men’s 50-metre freestyle final in the evening. Kylie Masse of LaSalle, Ont., in women’s 200-metre backstroke and Finlay Knox of Okotoks, Alta., in the men’s 200-metre individual medley also had finals at night.
Slovakia’s Tamara Potocka collapses after heat raceSlovakia swimmer Tamara Potocka collapsed poolside after a qualifying heat of the women’s 200-metre individual medley and was given first aid and then carried off on a stretcher.
Potocka, 21, was seen wearing an oxygen mask as she was taken away for medical attention. Medical personal at the pool said she was conscious. The BBC reported that Slovakian team officials said Potocká is asthmatic and had suffered an asthma attack after the race.
Potocka collapsed as she got out of the water and almost immediately was surrounded by a half-dozen medical attendants who put her on a stretcher after about a minute and carried her off the pool deck.
Potocka finished seventh in her heat in a time of two minutes 14.20 seconds. Her time was not fast enough to advance her to the semifinals of the event, which eliminated her from the competition.
With files from Doug Harrison, CBC Sports
