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And the day after her final race there, McIntosh was back in the pool: six kilometres in the morning, six in the afternoon. The 18-year-old took one day off to visit the Formula One race in Montreal with her Red Bull sponsorship gear, flew to France the Saturday night before race day and has been working since: swimming mixed with cycling, raising the bar higher still. Vergnoux is excited.

“The reality is that everything we did in terms of testing in the water has been better than before Victoria,â€� Vergnoux says. “She’s in better shape physically than in Victoria. And technically she’s actually pretty good. So it’s a little bit crazy to think about what could happen this week.â€�

The idea that McIntosh could surpass last month is mind-boggling, but there are nuances. She will swim more heats and semis than she did in Victoria, and is competing against live competition rather than by herself. She has faltered at the worlds once before, in the 400-metre freestyle in 2023.

But as Vergnoux said in Victoria, we can’t ever be surprised by McIntosh, because she has no limits. She won two golds at the worlds in both 2022 and 2023, in the 400-metre individual medley and the 200-metre butterfly. She won three golds in Paris: the 200 and 400 IMs and the 200 butterfly.

She will try to win five in Singapore. She could do it.

“I think doing five individual events at worlds is probably the maximum, events-wise, that I can do,� McIntosh said in a one-on-one interview with the Star last month. “So I think picking the five events and now trying to maximize the times, and all things that are included, has been lots of fun.�

One of those choices, though, is significant. McIntosh will swim the same five events she swam in Victoria: the 400 freestyle (she swam a world record 3:54.18 in Victoria, and the previous record holder, Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, is taking the year off post-Paris), the 200 IM (she swam a world record 2:05.70 in Victoria), the 200 butterfly (she swam the second-fastest time ever, 2:02.26, in Victoria), and the 400 IM, where her Victoria world record of 4:23.65 is 10 seconds faster than anyone else in the field here. She is favoured in every one of those races.

And then there is the 800 freestyle. It’s Katie Ledecky’s race. The American set and reset the world record five times from 2013 to 2016 and then, after searching for a higher plane for so long, broke the record again earlier this year in 8:04.12, after which Ledecky wept. Ledecky owned the 10 fastest times before McIntosh swam 8:05.07 in Victoria. It was the third-fastest 800, behind Ledecky’s gold medal at the Rio Olympics and her current mark.

“Fred sends me her three key sets every week to myself and (Swimming Canada performance scientist) Tom Vandenbogaerde, so you can see what she’s doing is at a level that’s mind-blowing,â€� says John Atkinson, Swimming Canada’s high performance director. “If you’re seeing that in training, you know it’s going to translate here.â€�

Nobody else can do this. McIntosh could still chase gold in the 200 backstroke or 200 freestyle if she wanted to switch or, god forbid, add. (She told the Star she would never swim six events at a major meet unless there were fewer preliminary races, which is unlikely.)

But the motivation of going after the great Ledecky is a different thing to wake up to every day. It’s a step toward swimming immortality.

“I think when we talk about Summer having no limit, she just has so much fun trying to push herself and discover where she can go,â€� Vergnoux says. “She knows that, in the future, she could be number one in swimming in the world in the 200 back, but she’s not sure about the 800. So there is a little bit of, let’s say, some fear. And sometimes athletes, they like to fear and they like the unknown.

“She’s swum the 800 four or five times, and Ledecky has swum a lot of 800s. Summer wants to go against the master of the race — you know, the goddess of the race, of the freestyle — and see if she can beat her. (She is saying) I’m going to take on the massive challenge. Why should I go to the 200 back where maybe I get first, I get second, I get a medal? I want to try something that looks impossible on paper.

“That’s actually a pretty good definition of Summer, you know: Do something that no one thinks is possible.”

So, Singapore. McIntosh should cruise in the 400 IM, and is clearly favoured in the 200 IM and the 200 butterfly.

Without Titmus, the 400 freestyle is down to her and Ledecky, and while Ledecky beat McIntosh in a 400 in Florida in early May, if McIntosh can match her time from Victoria — she cut 1.20 seconds off Titmus’s record — she likely wins. That said, she is also swimming a 200 IM semifinal 23 minutes after the 400 freestyle final — that double is a first for her at a major meet — so she might not be able to go all out.

The 800 freestyle should be the race of the meet. 

“I think I was in no man’s land for a lot of that race (in Victoria); I didn’t really know what’s going on,â€� McIntosh said. “I don’t know how to swim the 800 that well, especially fully on my own. I think it’s a lot more fun when there’s a race or someone beside me to not pace off them but have some sort of gauge.â€�

So she swam the third-fastest 800 while wandering around the middle 400 metres of the race, more or less. How will she swim with Ledecky, the human metronome, beside her? She can’t necessarily close like Ledecky. She will probably have to be ahead going into the final 50.

We’ll find out something else about McIntosh in that race, and in this meet. Like Victoria, this is the product of her work and her talent, and a statement of intent. As Vergnoux notes, she will swim up to 10 races before the 800 final, and then she will face the queen of the distance.

“I thought it was brilliant,â€� says Byron MacDonald, the longtime CBC swim commentator and head coach at the University of ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½. “For Summer and her mom (Jill, a former Olympic swimmer), who obviously is the overall guru in this thing, to float the idea of going after the 800 free and float the idea of: If you want to be the best ever in the world, you’ve got to take down the best ever.

“It’s step two (after Paris). The question, of course, is how many steps are there? You know, to the top of the staircase?â€�

Again, McIntosh can be the best individual swimmer of all time. Canada’s relays have regressed since then-Canada coach Ben Titley left the program, but the sport’s individual records are all in play. Ledecky holds the Olympic record for individual medals by a female swimmer: eight golds and 10 total. Phelps’s 28 Olympic medals can’t be touched, but his 16 individual medals and 13 golds? Three more dominant Olympics from McIntosh and those aren’t out of reach.

That’s a swimming lifetime away, oceans away, but Singapore is a step on the way there. McIntosh finished a disappointing fourth in the 400 freestyle at the 2023 worlds, and said before this meet that she didn’t have confidence in her freestyle training in previous world championships. Thanks to Vergnoux, who has only been coaching McIntosh since January of this year, she does now. He says her technique is one of the ways she is still improving; he says she still has lots of room to get better.

“He’s really pushed me to the next level in my freestyle,” McIntosh said, “and having the endurance to finish in 800 has definitely also helped my 400 freestyle.â€�

The first time she broke a world record she couldn’t sleep all night. In Paris, she learned about scheduling four races plus relays, recovery and managing her emotions, good and bad. At every stage she learns and she gets better, and your imagination has to expand. Singapore will be Summer versus Ledecky, Summer versus the world, and Summer versus Summer. Nobody else can do this. She’ll try.