Olympic Swimming Top Races, No. 6: Summer McIntosh, Kaylee McKeown, Kate Douglass Conclude Individual Events With 200 IM Clash
The Olympic swimming competition will begin Saturday, July 27, with the best swimmers in the world competing for medals in 28 individual races and seven relays over nine days of competition. Before that, Swimming World will count down the top-10 most anticipated races of the Games, where we can expect to find the best races and where the most decorated athletes will be racing for history.
- No. 10: Women’s 100 Butterfly
- No. 9: Men’s 400 Freestyle
- No. 8: Men’s 200 Butterfly
- No. 7: Men’s 100 Backstroke
By the time we reach day eight of Olympic swimming, we expect that Summer McIntosh, Kaylee McKeown and Kate Douglass will all have visited the medal podium, likely multiple times apiece. McKeown will have completed her backstroke events while Douglass has the 400 free relay, 100 freestyle and 200 breaststroke early in her program. McIntosh, meanwhile, is scheduled to swim four individual events, with the 400 free, 400 IM and 200 butterfly all proceeding the short medley.
Those three swimmers must effectively manage recovery throughout the week if they want to be competitive by the time the 200 IM final arrives. But only six swimmers in history have ever broken 2:07, and of that group, only these three will be racing at the Olympics.
Of the group, Douglass has the most international final experience in the 200 IM. She was the Olympic bronze medalist in the event in 2021, and after opting out of the race during the 2022 summer season, she returned to the event late that year in grand fashion. Since then, she has won every 200 IM race she has contested in various formats, including at the 2022 Short Course World Championships (short course meters), 2023 NCAA Championships (short course yards), 2023 World Championships, 2024 World Championships and 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials. The last of those swims produced Douglass’ best time of 2:06.79.
Kaylee McKeown — Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Scala / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto
McKeown was the global silver medalist in the 200 IM in 2022, but an attempted return to the Worlds final one year later did not pan out as she was disqualified for an illegal backstroke-to-breaststroke turn. McKeown ended up with a monster haul from the Fukuoka meet, winning golds in all three backstroke events plus a pair of medley relay medals, but the 200 IM will be a focus on her Olympic schedule. She owns the quickest best time in the field at 2:06.63, which she recorded at Australia’s Olympic Trials.
McIntosh will be the heavy favorite in the 400 IM, having captured world titles in the race the past two years, but she has never contested the 200 IM internationally except for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, where she took gold. She owns the world junior record at 2:06.89, set at last year’s Canadian Trials.
The fourth main contender has largely gone overlooked thanks to the brilliance of these three, but forgetting about Alex Walsh would be silly, especially as Walsh has all week to prepare for just this one event. Walsh won Olympic silver in 2021, a world title in 2022 and then a global silver one year later. Her best time of 2:07.13 ranks No. 8 all-time.
A race with these four will showcase a variety of strengths: McIntosh and Douglass are both world-class in butterfly, and while McKeown certainly boasts the strongest backstroke leg, Walsh has plenty to offer on that stroke as well. Douglass is a contender for Olympic gold in the 200 breaststroke, but Walsh just missed the U.S. Olympic team in that event, so she could be in the lead after 150 meters. However, Walsh does not have the freestyle leg to match the closing speed of her three main rivals.
Behind the established favorites, Canada’s Sydney Pickrem will try to contend for her first individual Olympic medal after swimming a best time of 2:07.68 at her country’s Trials to move into the all-time top-10 in the event. Pickrem is another breaststroke specialist, having handled that stroke on Canada’s bronze-medal-winning 400 medley relay team in Tokyo.
China’s Yu Yiting, the bronze medalist at Worlds in 2023 and 2024, has elite front-half speed but struggles on breaststroke, and she has hit a 2:08 this year along with Israel’s Anastasia Gorbenko, the Netherlands’ Marrit Steenbergen and Great Britain’s Abbey Wood. The wild card here is Japan’s Yui Ohashi, the Olympic champion three years ago who is returning to the Games at age 28. But any of these swimmers are looking at a tough challenge against McKeown, McIntosh, Douglass and Walsh.
