Summer McIntosh wins gold in 200 butterfly, continues her march to swimming supremacy at the 2024 Paris Olympics

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PARIS — Canadian prodigy Summer McIntosh continued her rise to the top of swimming with gold in the women’s 200-meter butterfly at the 2024 Olympic Games.

McIntosh, 17, claimed her third individual medal of the Games and her second title. Her victory in the 400-meter individual medley on Monday was her coming-out party on the sport’s biggest stage. It was the first of what could be many more acts to come.

McIntosh won the 200m butterfly in 2:03.03, beating American Regan Smith and China’s Zhang Yufei, who settled for silver and bronze respectively.

It was Smith’s fifth Olympic medal and her second at the Paris Games, but the 22-year-old Minnesotan remains in search of her first gold.

McIntosh, on the other hand, is already on her way to several. She is to women’s swimming what Léon Marchand is to men’s — except she’s five years younger and still can’t legally drink or vote.

Yet she has already won two consecutive world championships in the 200 butterfly in 2022 and 2023. She has already set world records. She has already won eight medals at the World Championships.

And she handled her second Olympics — yes, her second, at 17 — with remarkable composure. She celebrated her 400 medley quite matter-of-factly.

“I took a moment to enjoy the moment,” she said a few days later. “… But now I’m just focused on the 200 butterfly.”

She spoke of the nerves and unpredictability of the Olympic finals. “But I’ve figured out how to channel that and turn it into something positive instead of something negative,” she said. She spoke as if she were a 10-year veteran of the sport at international level. And then, on Thursday night, she swam like one.

She swam like the daughter of an Olympian, which she is. Her mother, Jill, swam in the 1984 Los Angeles Games — the 200 butterfly.

On Thursday, McIntosh went nearly 10 seconds faster than her mother ever did, becoming the first woman to win three individual medals at these Olympics. She could win a fourth on Saturday in the 200 medley. And she could have won more if the Olympic schedule had been a little more forgiving of her prodigious talent.