Summer McIntosh, Lukas Martens live up to hype to win World Aquatics C’ships 400m freestyle finals

SINGAPORE – Canadian swimming sensation Summer McIntosh completed Part One of her quest to win five individual gold medals at the World Aquatics Championships (WCH), when she comfortably touched the wall first in the women’s 400m freestyle final in 3min 56.26sec on July 27.

Despite being the world record holder (3:54.18), the 18-year-old had never won gold in the event at the Olympics or WCH.

But there was no stopping her after she broke free from a deadlock with Australia’s Lani Pallister in the first lap at the WCH Arena, as she won the race by almost two seconds over China’s Li Bingjie, before rushing off to prepare for the 200m individual medley semi-finals, in which she ended as the fastest qualifier for the July 28 final.

On coping with the double race for the first time, McIntosh said: “While preparing mentally for this world championships, I think tonight is my biggest night of the whole meet... to finally stand in the centre of the podium is promising for the rest of the meet.

“The 200 IM semi-final, it was so much fun in the ready room, just chilling. Honestly, this makes me want to do more doubles and it was definitely an interesting kind of stimulus.”

In what can be viewed as a warning to her competitors in the 200m butterfly, 800m freestyle and the 200m and 400m medleys, she said: “I think I’m at my best. I’m in the best shape of my life. So now I just have to act on that and put it into all my races.”

This meet had been billed as a generational duel between McIntosh and Katie Ledecky, but there were surprises on the podium as Li produced a blistering final lap to overtake and beat the American legend by 0.28sec to take silver in an Asian-record 3:58.21.

Still only 23, Li was a prodigy across all the freestyle distances when she burst onto the scene with three medals at the 2017 WCH at just age 15. Since then, she has struggled with injury and self-doubt, missing the 400m and 800m finals at the Paris Olympics.

Rebounding well in 2025 to become the first Asian woman to go under four minutes in the 400m in May before she beat Ledecky for the first time in her career, she said: “She may not be at her peak form now, but this result is still very significant and meaningful to me.

“I’ve looked up to her since I was a young athlete and learnt so much from watching her swim. I feel emotional because this is something that I’ve thought about for so many years. I want to keep improving to be able to continue competing against Katie.”

Ledecky, whose bronze is the first among her 27 WCH medals, will look to exert her dominance in the longer distances.

The 28-year-old said: “The first day is sometimes a hit or miss for me at these worlds. I’m really excited for the distance races, I mean that’s kind of my thing. The 400 is too, I guess, but I’m really excited for the 1,500 tomorrow.”

The first final of the WCH whipped the sold-out crowd into a frenzy, as Germany’s Lukas Martens traded leads with Australian Sam Short in the men’s 400m freestyle before winning by 0.02sec in 3:42.35. South Korea’s defending champion Kim Woo-min claimed bronze in 3:42.60.

Martens, 23, said: “There was a lot of pressure. As a world record holder (3:39.96) and Olympic champion, it was not easy to fight these guys. But I tried my best, I gave everything, and I’m really happy and proud to be a world champion.”

Short, 21, dedicated the medal to his late aunt who died weeks ago, saying: “It’s been quite hard for my family recently. However bad I was hurting there, it was nowhere near as bad as her battling cancer the last 10 years.”

Australia were still able to celebrate double gold in the 4x100m freestyle relays, with their men’s team of Flynn Southam, Kai Taylor, Maximillian Giuliani and Kyle Chalmers winning in a championship record time of 3:08.97, while their women’s team of Mollie O’Callaghan, Meg Harris, Milla Jansen and Olivia Wunsch triumphed in 3:30.60.

Earlier in the day, the host nation’s swimmers and supporters also had something to cheer about, even if no Singaporean progressed from the morning heats.

Local distance queen Gan Ching Hwee set a national record in the women’s 400m freestyle, as she won heat 2 in 4:09.81 to lower Lynette Lim’s national mark of 4:11.24 set at the 2009 SEA Games.

The 22-year-old finished 13th overall out of 29 swimmers across four heats, about three seconds slower than German Maya Werner (4:06.75), who was the last qualifier for the eight-swimmer final. New Zealand’s defending champion Erika Fairweather was disqualified after a false start.

Gan, the national record holder in the women’s 800m (8:32.37) and 1,500m (16:10.13) was “pleasantly surprised” she managed to slice 2.5sec off her 400m personal best of 4:12.31, especially as she felt she had not made big strides in the event in the past few years.

But having her family and friends in the stands helped in her latest breakthrough.

She told The Straits Times: “I haven’t swum in front of a home crowd in a big competition before, so this was very new and exciting for me.

“This national record has definitely been in my sights for a really long time and the 400m is the most challenging for myself because I need to strike a balance between speed and endurance and I haven’t really been able to do that for the past couple of years, never really had a major breakthrough, so this national record was a pleasant surprise.”

“For some of the upcoming races, I do have a good lane in a fast heat (Gan is in the same 800m freestyle heat as McIntosh and the same 1,500m freestyle heat as Italy’s defending champion Simona Quadarella), so I’m going to do my best to race and hopefully keep up with the girls next to me,” she added.

Other national swimmers who featured on the first day of the swimming competitions were Teong Tzen Wei (22nd in men’s 50m butterfly in 23.38), Quah Jing Wen (24th in women’s 100m butterfly in 59.18), Letitia Sim (27th in women’s 200m individual medley in 2:15.45), Glen Lim (32nd in men’s 400m freestyle in 3:54.97) and Chan Junhao (41st in 1:02.00 in men’s 100m breaststroke).

Ardi Azman, Mikkel Lee, Jonathan Tan and Lim also teamed up in the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay heats to finish 18th overall in 3:18.38.