Summer McIntosh wasn’t the only member of her family tearing it up in Toronto this weekend.
Her older sister, Brooke McIntosh, made her senior Grand Prix figure skating debut on the other side of the city on Friday and earned a fourth-place finish in pairs on Saturday along with partner Benjamin Mimar. The pair had previously won a national junior title in January and claimed bronze at World Juniors in April.
The McIntosh parents were faced with a tough decision of whether to watch 16-year-old Summer swim the second-fastest SCM 400 freestyle time in history or witness 17-year-old Brooke make her senior debut at the Grand Prix around the same time on Friday night.
“They’ve been to a couple of Summer’s swim competitions and they haven’t had the opportunity to come to as many of mine,” Brooke told the Toronto Star. “So they are here tonight.”
Summer and Brooke’s mother, Jill Horstead, was a successful swimmer during the 1980s. Horstead competed at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, placing ninth overall in the 200 butterfly. Two years later, she won a bronze medal at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
Summer and Brooke grew up practicing both swimming and figure skating before finding their respective specialities.
The McIntoshes aren’t the first multi-sport swimming family from Canada. Penny Oleksiak, the most decorated Olympian in Canadian history, has a brother, Jamie, who plays for the NHL’s Seattle Kraken.
I coached sisters who started off doing both figure skating and swimming. Their mom is a figure skating coach and their grandfather was one of the swim coaches for the Irish national team at some point in the past. Ironically the sister who chose figure skating preferred it because she thought the water in the pool was too cold. I joke with the sister who chose swimming that her family is still an aquatic family – half liquid water sport and half frozen water sport!
Summer chose swimming because it suits her height better than skating, but these divergent pursuits are not unrelated. The athleticism (strength, explosiveness, balance, body control, proprioception) she developed through skating is transformative and really paying off in the pool. Swimming isn’t an effective way to build athleticism, but it sure benefits from it.
As a swim coach, man that last sentence is so true.
I’m in awe of how their family handles all of this, logistically.
Chapeau to the McIntosh family 🎩