Summer McIntosh on the World Record She Didn’t Think She Had

Three-time Olympic champion and 12-time world champion Summer McIntosh sits down with Katie Hoff Anderson in person for the first time, in the Hall of Fame at the University of Texas, to explain what went wrong at Pan Pacs, what she changed afterwards, and what life looks like now that Austin is home.

Summer walks through her 2026 season from the inside. She got sick at Canadian Trials, and Bob Bowman was the one who pulled her out of the meet, days after she broke the 200 fly world record in Montreal. That illness cost her the first week of ramping back up, and on top of it she was, in her words, fully over tapered for Pan Pacs. She explains why the meet felt like she could not shift gears, why she stayed up until 3am in her hotel room on the last night writing down everything she wanted to fix, and how she wiped it from her mind before her two weeks off in Toronto.

The deeper thread is how she processes a bad meet without dragging it into the next season. She talks about being "either like zero or 100" when it comes to swimming, the small daily habits she is tightening up, from protein after every practice to eight to ten hours of sleep, and the bigger fixes on her turns, her dives and how to train for five events. Her biggest lesson from the summer: "I'd way rather be a little bit under tapered than over tapered."

She also gets candid about training under Bob Bowman a year in. He does not hand out many good jobs, he is tapped into every practice, and in her words, "he does not miss a meter." She tells the story of the 200 fly world record she did not think she had in her, turning for the last 50, hearing the crowd and realizing she must be close to record pace.

There is plenty of fun in here too: presenting the pole position award to George Russell at the Canadian Grand Prix while dressed head to toe in Red Bull, a 6'10" boyfriend Bob calls "big boy", Katie's theory that the best women swimmers in the world all love to clean, and why Summer tidies her boyfriend's room within five minutes of every visit.

She closes with her goal for 2027 outside the pool, learning from her older sister about growing into her own, and why she is skipping Short Course Worlds to train through toward US Open. This one is for anyone who wants to hear how one of the best swimmers in the world handles a meet that did not go her way.

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