Summer McIntosh poses with her Olympic Games 2024 medals on Aug. 5, at Canada Olympic House in Paris. Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail

When Summer McIntosh was little, her mom found one of her soccer trophies in the garbage.

She was playing in a league in which every player got an award for taking part, no matter the outcome of the match.

But her team hadn’t won, and Summer saw no reason why she should be given the same trophy as the winners. She wasn’t being bratty; she just didn’t want what she hadn’t rightfully earned.

“I asked my husband what we should do,” Jill McIntosh recalls, remembering how concerned she was at the time.

They decided to leave it alone. They were going to let their daughter be herself.

In that moment, one of Canada’s greatest Olympians was already taking shape. It was an early glimpse of the person who has emerged in Paris as one of the country’s most successful athletes, not just now, but in history.

Until now, no Canadian has ever won three gold medals at a single Olympics.

“I don’t think it’s sunk in at all, to be honest. I’m pretty sleep-deprived and tired,” Ms. McIntosh said Monday, after nine days of races in which she competed 13 times, won four medals – three golds and a silver – and swam roughly three kilometres combined.

But for all the stats and superlatives that have surrounded her, one number drives home the impact she’s had on Canadian swimming, even before her 18th birthday. That number is 25 per cent.

Since Canada started competing in Olympic swimming in 1908, it has won 12 gold medals. The country hasn’t lacked for talented swimmers over the years. But Ms. McIntosh is now responsible for one-quarter of those victories.

“I feel it will definitely take a while for me to realize what exactly we’ve done,” Ms. McIntosh said. “I think it will sink in more once I head back to Canada.”

Outside the country, her potential is now being mentioned in the same sentence as some of the greatest swimmers in history: Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Mark Spitz, Ian Thorpe and others.

At 17, and with less than two weeks until her birthday, Ms. McIntosh has a lot on her plate. She still has two high-school courses to finish before she can graduate, something she fretted about this spring even while preparing for the Olympics.

“She was all stressed out,” Jill said. “I’m like, ‘It’s April, Summer, you don’t have to kill yourself. You can do it in the fall.’”

She’ll fly back to Toronto on Tuesday, spend some time with friends at the family cottage and then will likely hop on a flight back to Paris to carry the Canadian flag in the closing ceremony on Sunday.

If there’s one word that sums up how impressive Ms. McIntosh’s four-medal performance has been, given that she swims multiple different endurance events, it’s a word that has come up only in the past few days: pain.

All last week, Ms. McIntosh spoke consistently and methodically about her races; just focusing on the next one, trusting in her training, nothing was bothering her. She made it sound easy.

But after her final race this weekend, there was a subtle shift. Asked if she felt tired, Ms. McIntosh replied that yes, she was, a little. But, she added: “I’ve trained years and years and simulated this kind of pain and exhaustion.”

It’s another side of their daughter that Jill and Greg McIntosh saw in her at a young age: never fearing pain.

“I actually think that is kind of a little bit of a secret weapon, is her pain tolerance,” said Jill, who swam for Canada at the 1984 Olympics.

She tells a story of Summer in grade school. Her class was taking part in a cross-country race, with an adult playing the role of pace bunny for the kids to chase.

It was supposed to be a fun activity, but a lot of the children didn’t want to take part. Summer called her mother over and had a different worry: “What happens if I pass the pace bunny?”

Worried she’d get lost if she ran faster than the adult, she was merely thinking ahead. Summer ended up winning, and Jill remembers her collapsing in tears of exhaustion after pushing herself too hard.

“She won by a lot,” Jill said. “And I felt so bad. I think she just freaked her body out. Because her ability to push her body is exceptional.”

Coaches marvel at Ms. McIntosh’s ability to empty the tank and then recover.

In Paris, she had as little as 40 minutes between races some nights, which gave her precious little time to reset. Visits to the podium only ate into that time. Suffice to say, Canadian swimming has never quite had an athlete who can shoulder so much at such a young age, or any age.

With swimming now done, she is already looking forward to doing some shopping when she gets home – regular teenager stuff – as well as spending time with her cats, another top priority, and celebrating her birthday. It will be some welcome downtime.

But as Ms. McIntosh leaves Paris, the planning for the rest of her athletic career ultimately begins now. How long it lasts, and what happens next, will largely be the product of how she approaches the years before Los Angeles 2028 and beyond.

Burnout in swimming is a well-known threat. Penny Oleksiak, who won four medals for Canada at the 2016 Rio Games at the age of 16, has talked about how she lost her love for the sport several years ago amid the grind of training and the pressure and responsibilities that come with Olympic fame, often when she just wanted to be a kid.

Now 24, Canada’s most decorated Olympian with seven medals has learned to enjoy training again, but admits the transition was a difficult one. She never disliked the public persona swimming gave her, and loved signing autographs for little girls at the grocery store, but Ms. Oleksiak knows it changed her life in ways her teenage self wasn’t fully ready for.

Ms. McIntosh will now likely be recognized when the family goes out to eat in Toronto.

“That will be a bit strange I’m sure,” said her mother. “To be honest, it still doesn’t seem real.”

She will likely be more anonymous in Sarasota, Fla., where she trains. But Ms. McIntosh isn’t concerned either way. She has always been planning for longevity in the sport, she says. But in the maelstrom of Paris, she hasn’t yet had time to process everything.

“Not at all,” Ms. McIntosh said. “I appreciate the support and the attention. It just shows how much love and passion we have as a nation. But for me, the reason I’m doing this is just because I have so much love for this sport.”

As Ms. McIntosh soon turns her attention to the 2028 Olympics, the next four years would be daunting for any teenager, Jill said.

“It’s a big four years for her age bracket, usually leaving home, going to university, all that stuff that she’s going to be going through. But I think you just take it one day at a time, and just make sure that she’s surrounded by the best people.”

Five-time medalist Kylie Masse, 28, who just completed her third Olympics, said achieving longevity and avoiding burnout is all about staying grounded away from the pool.

“This is something that I’ve had to learn. When you’re so wrapped up in the times and the outcome year after year after year, eventually that’s going to get exhausting,” Ms. Masse said. “And I think it’s in those times that it’s the most important to really remember the journey and keep things in perspective.”

One of the details of her life Ms. McIntosh enjoys talking about most is her cat, Mikey, who she named after her idol, Michael Phelps, considered the greatest swimmer in history.

That her name is now being mentioned alongside his and others, given her gold medals and her future potential, is something that is “absolutely unreal,” she said.

“I don‘t think I should be,” Ms. McIntosh said. “I still have a lot more I have to do to even be considered.”

Asked about future swimmers naming their cat Summer, Ms. McIntosh laughed.

“That’s funny.”

Grant Robertson
The Globe and Mail, August 5, 2024