AS I SEE IT COLUMN: All hail Summer McIntosh — the best Canadian athlete ever?

I sure hope you got a chance to see the recent World Swimming Championships in Singapore.

Normally at international swimming events, when you see a swimmer win by three or four body lengths, it’s an American or Australian swimmer.

At the 2025 Worlds it was Canada – specifically 18-year-old Summer McIntosh – winning by margins so gigantic that sometimes the nearest competitors weren’t even in the same camera shot.

And with McIntosh adding to her already illustrious career with four golds and one bronze at the worlds, she proved that she absolutely has to be in the conversation as the greatest athlete – male or female, in any sport – that our country has ever produced.

She’s still a teenager and yet McIntosh’s tally of medals and world records is astonishing:

· At the 2021 worlds she won one gold and two silver

· A year later she won two gold, one silver and one bronze at the worlds

· At the 2023 worlds she won two gold and two bronze

· In 2024 she won three Olympic gold medals and one silver

· Mcintosh was named the 2024 Female Athlete of the Year by World Aquatics

· At the recent 2025 worlds Mcintosh won four golds and a bronze.

· She owns a whopping six world records in the pool

If that was someone’s lifetime résumé in the pool it would be incredible. That it’s a resume of a young 18-year-old is hard to comprehend. And then factor in that she’s Canadian and it becomes difficult – if not downright impossible – to adequately describe just how dominant and amazing an athlete she is.

Her four golds at the worlds are the most ever won by a woman at a single world championships, a record she shares with the legendary Katie Ledecky.

McIntosh’s historic performance at the 2024 Olympics in Paris marked the first time any Canadian – male or female, at the winter or summer Olympics – has won three golds at a single Olympic games.

And here’s the most tantalizing part to this amazing story. With the next Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, McIntosh will only be 21 years old. She could easily participate in two more Olympics after that.

If she continues on her current trajectory, McIntosh’s Olympic medal haul after participating at four different Olympics could be legendary. We’re talking the possibility to be crowned the greatest swimmer who ever lived.

Whatever happens down the road, Canadians should be thrilled that Summer is one of us.

Buy Canadian. Bye America

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Big-time thanks to Elbert Toews for providing me with more and new information about Steinbach’s history-making high school volleyball achievements.

As we wrote about last week, the late Jake Epp coached the Steinbach Collegiate Institute (SCI) girls’ volleyball team to a provincial title, a first for our town.

Mr. Toews told me that was in 1968, and Steinbach defeated Dakota in the finals. The very next year, in 1969, Mr. Toews took over as the full-time SCI coach (he was Jake’s assistant coach the previous championship year). Amazingly, the SCI girls’ team once again met Dakota in the finals.

Unfortunately, Dakota prevailed in the sequel, but if there were historical records to scour threw, I would bet a lot of money that no rural team ever made it to the provincial volleyball finals two years in a row.