Sight of SoFi Gives Summer McIntosh Chills as She Preps Program for Pan Pacs
Summer McIntosh’s training has long been geared to be in Los Angeles in 2028. She’s in Southern California this week for a dry run.
The four-day Pan Pacific Championships will present different challenges and opportunities for the Canadian superstar than the nine-day meet two years hence up the road in Inglewood. But something about testing herself against a sizeable portion of the world’s elite swimmers this week sets the stage.
The flight into Los Angeles offered a literal glimpse at SoFi Stadium, which will host swimming competition at the 2028 Olympics, offering McIntosh a tantalizing look at what she hopes is her future.
“I hadn’t opened the window the whole plane ride, and then as soon as I open the window, as we’re about to land, I see SoFi Stadium, and I got full-body chills,” McIntosh said Monday in a pre-meet press conference at Woollett Aquatics Center in Irvine. “Just imagining two years from now where I’m going to be, it’s really exciting.”
Pan Pacs will be a chance to measure herself against the top American competition and some of the best from Australia, Japan and China, among other nations. McIntosh’s spell at the Bell Canadian Trials was cut short after a day and a half due to illness last month. She recovered quickly, and the biggest loss was the emotional shortfall of not being able to keep her good form rolling.
She’s set the majority of her best times at Canadian trials meets, and she started the meet in Montreal by finally vanquishing the 17-year-old world record in the 200 butterfly.
McIntosh’s Olympic quadrennial is not just a quest to stack records but a process of elimination on events that include six or seven viable medal options, for a swimmer who picked up three gold and a silver in Paris two years ago.
She’s entered in five events at Pan Pacs – the 200 free, 200 fly, 400 IM, 400 free, 200 IM – four of which she holds world records in. McIntosh indicated she will choose the 200 free over the 200 fly on Wednesday, the opening day of the meet.
While the 200 fly is the most recent of her successes, the 200 free sounds like her summer project. She swam it twice this spring after not racing it since Olympic Trials in 2024. Her best time of 1:53.65 dates from Worlds in 2023, the world junior record.
McIntosh described the 800 free, in which she is not entered this week, as “last season coming off the Olympics … just a challenge for me” given her distance-heavy training in France with former coach Fred Vergnoux. The 800 free falls on the same day as the 200 fly in Los Angeles in 2028, and while she’s said before that the double isn’t automatically disqualifying, she called the 800’s chances in her Olympic program, “most likely no, but I’m not ruling it off the table” on Monday.
This season, she’s “focused more on 200 freestyle, which has always been one of my stronger events.” She also made note of University of Texas training partner Leon Marchand popping a 1:43.76 in the 200 free to become the No. 6 performer of all-time at the European Championships Monday, which was, “really impressive and is also very promising heading into Pan Pacs for the rest of us.”
It’s all part of the building process for McIntosh. She’s a contender in so many events that narrowing a program is not easy. Pan Pacs is another data point in the pool and for how she handles everything outside of it – the conditions, the pressure, the basics of a summer meet in California.
“I honestly can’t wait for it,” she said of her anticipation for 2028. “But there’s a lot of steps along the way that have to happen before that happens, of course. But it’s just super cool to be in California and knowing that two years from now I’ll hopefully be in So-Fi.”
