Summer McIntosh broke the longest-standing world record in women’s swimming, and the last women’s record remaining from the super-suit era.
McIntosh, a three-time 2024 Olympic gold medalist, clocked 2 minutes, 1.65 seconds in the 200m butterfly at the Canadian trials in Montreal on Sunday.
The previous record of 2:01.81 was set by China’s Liu Zige in October 2009 at the tail end of a two-year stretch when the world’s best swimmers rewrote the record books in polyurethane suits that were banned starting in 2010.
The family love is strong for @summermcintoshh as she breaks the 200m butterfly world record🥹❤️ pic.twitter.com/EC6dA1XFhP
— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) July 6, 2026
“As you can see by emotions, this means the absolute world,” McIntosh said in a pool-deck interview moments after the record-breaking swim. “Growing up, this is the one world record that I thought I would never break.”
McIntosh, a 19-year-old from Toronto, now owns the world record in four events — the 200m and 400m individual medleys, the 400m freestyle and the 200m fly.
She is the first swimmer to hold four individual long-course world records simultaneously since Swede Sarah Sjostrom held the 50m and 100m fly and 50m and 100m free world records from 2017 to 2024.
The 200m fly is McIntosh’s trademark event.
Her first world title came in the 200m fly in 2022 -- at age 15. She broke the Olympic record in Paris, swimming 2:03.03. In 2025, she recorded, at the time, the second-, third- and fourth-fastest times in history, including a 2:01.99 at the World Championships, missing Liu’s record by 18 hundredths.
McIntosh’s mom, Jill, swam the 200m fly at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
“She liked (the 200m fly world record) because everyone said it was untouchable — that’s why she wanted it so badly,” Jill said, according to the Toronto Star. “Tonight was extra special because that world record (was) Summer’s dream as a 10-year-old.”
Before McIntosh came along, nobody had swum within two seconds of Liu’s record since she set it.
With those super suits in 2008 and 2009, a world record was broken in every event that was on the Olympic program except the men’s 1500m freestyle (and the women’s 1500m free, which wasn’t on the Olympic program then but was contested at World Championships).
Now, just five world records — all in men’s events — remain from 2008 or 2009 out of the 20 men’s events and 20 women’s events that are on the current Olympic program: men’s 200m and 800m frees, 200m backstroke and 4x100m and 4x200m free relays.
American Katie Ledecky is now the longest-standing world record holder in any women’s event, having first broken the 800m and 1500m free world records at the 2013 World Championships.
Ledecky and McIntosh have gone head-to-head in the 200m, 400m and 800m frees and are expected to do so in at least the 400m free at the Pan Pacific Championships in August in Irvine, California.
McIntosh, who now trains in Austin, Texas under Michael Phelps’ career-long coach Bob Bowman, has said she wants to swim five individual events at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
She did so at the 2025 Worlds, winning four golds and a bronze in the 800m free behind Ledecky and Australian Lani Pallister.
The only swimmer — male or female — to win five individual golds at a single Olympics was Phelps in 2008.
