At the Canadian Swimming Trials on Saturday, Summer McIntosh won the 400-meter individual medley in 4 minutes, 25.87 seconds, breaking her second world mark of the week.
The 16-year-old sensation beat the time of 4:26.36 recorded by Katinka Hosszu, a Hungarian, at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
McIntosh set a world record in the 400m freestyle to start the competition, which served as Canada’s qualifying meet for the World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, in July.
At the Australian Championships in Adelaide last May, Australian Ariarne Titmus broke American Katie Ledecky’s six-year-old record with a time of 3:56.40. With her time of 3:56.08, she broke that benchmark.
Since Ledecky in 2013, McIntosh is the swimmer who is the youngest to beat a long course swimming world record in an individual Olympic event.
“Obviously it’s really amazing and I’m really happy to get another world record,” McIntosh said in a pool-deck interview.
“Right now I’m just thinking about my legs,” she added, letting her knees sag for a moment before adding: “They hurt so bad.
“The 4IM is one of the toughest events out there so going into tonight I just tried to mentally prepare for that,” she said. “Whatever the time was the time would be.”
McIntosh, who won 200m butterfly and 400m medley gold at the World Championships in Budapest last year, fell behind the world record pace after the penultimate breaststroke leg of the medley final but rallied on the closing freestyle.
“In the freestyle, I always like to look at the clock and I think I saw 26.1 or something and I thought, just go, go crazy,” she said.
“I just gave it everything I’ve got and I knew it would be close.”
