2025 World Swimming Championships: Katie Vs Summer

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE – JULY 27: (EDITORS NOTE: Image was captured using an underwater robotic camera.) Summer McIntosh of Team Canada competes in the Women’s 200m Individual Medley Semifinal on day 17 of the Singapore 2025 World Aquatics Championships at World Aquatics Championships Arena on July 27, 2025 in Singapore. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

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The 2025 world swimming championships have been underway in Singapore all week. The best swimmers in the world are there including Olympians Leon Marchand who just set a world record in the 200 meter individual medley, Gretchen Walsh who won the 100 meter butterfly, and David Popovici who won the 200 meter freestyle. But the main event is Katie vs Summer.

Both Swimmers Peaking

Katie Ledecky, 28, has won 14 Olympic medals, including nine golds, and world records in the 800m and 1500m freestyle and is considered the greatest female swimmer of all time. Summer Mcintosh, 18, is already a three-time Olympic champion and easily beat Ledecky on Saturday in the 400 meter freestyle. In addition she won gold in the 200 meter individual medley and has a good shot at winning three more here. She is currently the greatest female swimmer in the world.

Ledecky came back after losing to Mcintosh and easily won the 1500 meter freestyle–a race she has not lost in 15 years! She holds the top 11 times in the world in this event.

Who Will Win?

Now the 800 meter freestyle looms as the final showdown between these two champions. Ledecky just recently lowered her own world record in the 800. The 28-year-old set a new mark of 8 minutes and 4.12 seconds, breaking the previous mark she set nearly nine years ago at the 2016 Rio Olympics by 0.67 seconds. According to USA Swimming, Ledecky until recently had the top 10 performances all-time in the event.

But McIntosh changed all that at the Canadian swim trials in June. She came up just short of Ledecky’s world record in the 800 free with a time of 8:05.07. As McIntosh swam the third-fastest time in history, she broke Ledecky’s stranglehold on the top performances in history in this race. For the first time in several years Ledecky will face her equal in this event.

Who Am I Cheering For?

The more I studied each woman’s career the more I came to the conclusion: I am cheering for both of them. They both deserve to win this Saturday. I say that not just because of their singular achievements. In different ways both Katie and Summer have separated themselves from all other elite, world-class swimmers based upon performance. They have both been dominant.

Has anyone in the history of swimming been head and shoulders the best in their event for fifteen years like Ledecky has in the 1500 meter freestyle? And when was the last time a swimmer was given good odds to win five individual gold medals in the world championships as Mcintosh currently is? That is dominance.

It Is More Than Just Performance

But I find myself cheering equally for Ledecky and Mcintosh beyond their dominance in the pool. I am cheering for the both of them because of what they have faced and overcome outside the pool. Elite athletes are like everyone else: Life keeps happening to them on life’s terms too. They can control their training hours, their diet and their attitude…but that’s it. They are powerless over the rest of their lives.

Katie Ledecky: Diagnosed With POTS

Beyond Ledecky’s gold medals and world records is a lesser-known story of perseverance and resilience. In her memoir released in 2024, “Just Add Water: My Swimming Life,” Ledecky revealed her 10-year battle with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a condition that affects the nervous system.

POTS is a disorder of the autonomic nervous system, which controls body functions we often don’t think about, such as heart rate and blood pressure. As Ledecky describes in her memoir, “I pool blood in the vessels below my heart when I stand. My body then releases extra norepinephrine or epinephrine, which adds additional stressors on my heart, making it beat faster. Which, in turn, brings on dizziness, fainting, and exhaustion.” Ledecky first experienced symptoms of POTS during the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, Russia.

One evening after dinner, she felt unusually hot and lightheaded. In the days and weeks that followed, she endured episodes of extreme fatigue and dizziness, sometimes feeling faint even during simple activities like walking.

“I’ve had it under control completely. I really just had to add salt to my diet and wear compression gear. Whenever I get sick and when I go to hot environments, I need to be especially careful to stay on top of my salt and hydration,” she said.

“I thought it was important to tell my whole story, and that was a part of my story, especially leading up to the 2016 Olympics. It was a new thing that I had to acknowledge and be aware of, something that was always in the back of my mind. I wanted to share how that’s impacted me at different points and how I’ve been able to push through that and take control of that part and live a healthy lifestyle.”

Summer Mcintosh: Persevering Through Loss And Suffering At A Young Age

In 2021 Mcintosh, just fourteen years old, was Canada’s youngest swimmer at the Tokyo Olympic Games. Amid the challenges all of the athletes there had endured while trying to train throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Summer McIntosh was also coping with the death of her coach Kevin Thorburn in April 2020, as well as the throat cancer diagnosis of her father in January of 2021.

Thorburn, who coached 18 Canadian champions, was a member of the Canadian staff for the Olympics in 1996, 2012 and 2016. As Summer’s mother Jill Mcintosh said at the time: “Everyone has had their battles during this pandemic. But she lost her coach through all of this, suddenly. It was devastating for her and everyone,”

Prior to Tokyo the Canadian Olympic swimming trials were held on Father’s Day and the swimmer’s dad, Greg McIntosh, was brought up on the big screen inside the venue for a post-race interview. That was the first time in weeks Greg McIntosh had been out of bed. He had been going through chemotherapy since getting diagnosed in January of 2021.

“He should have won an Academy Award for that because he literally hadn’t left the bed,” said her mom. “That was his first time getting in the shower and having a shirt on.”

When Greg was diagnosed with cancer that January, the family made the difficult decision to split up geographically to minimize the COVID-19 risk. Greg moved into a place in downtown Toronto, Jill and Summer rented a condo, and Greg and Jill’s other daughter Brooke–a competitive pairs figure skater who competed at the 2020 Youth Olympics–stayed at the family home nearby..

In spite of Covid, her coach’ s death, and her father’s throat cancer Summer would persevere finishing fourth in the 400 meter freestyle and setting a new Canadian record at just 14 years of age.

Control the Controllables

In the end both Katie and Summer will swim like champions on Saturday but only one swimmer will win. Both will give 100% effort and leave everything they have in the pool. And based upon what we know about each of their personal journeys, that will be enough for either swimmer no matter who wins.

Speaking to graduates at Stanford University, her alma mater on June 15th, Ledecky emphasized that real achievement comes from internal drive, not external comparison.

“You don’t have to win the race,” Ledecky told the crowd. “You just need to win your race. And winning your race means falling in love with the process, not the podium. Winning is inherently about comparison,” she said. “The real race is always the same: it’s me against my goals.”