By Sean Gregory/Nanterre, France
anadian swimmer Kyle Masse had just completed her semifinal heat in the 100-m breaststroke on Monday, to qualify for tomorrow night’s final in that event, when a journalist asked her another athlete: Summer McIntosh, the 17-year-old Canadian swimming phenom who earlier in the evening won the gold medal in the 400-m individual medley (IM), clinching her second medal of these Games, and first Olympic gold. Typically, an individual sport athlete isn’t too keen on discussing someone else, in another race, when fretting her own results.
Night three of competition in the Olympic pool in Nanterre, France, just west of Paris, continued to see slower-than expected times, due, some think, to the relatively shallow depth that creates choppy conditions and slows an athlete’s swim. McIntosh was the only one who crushed the field, winning her race by nearly 6 seconds, ahead of silver medalist Katie Grimes and bronze winner Emma Weyant, both of Team USA. Though the four other finals on Monday were shorter distances, no race was decided by more than .54 seconds. The men’s 200-m freestyle final was a particular thriller, with Romanian David Popovici edging Matthew Richards of Great Britain by 0.02 seconds: Luke Hobson of the U.S. won bronze, finishing 0.07 seconds behind Popovic.
Don’t equate slow racing with boring racing.
Team USA finished with four medals on the night. Besides Grimes, Weyant and Hobson, Ryan Murphy finished third in the 100-m backstroke, behind Thomas Ceccon of Italy, who won with a time of 52.00 seconds, and Jiayu Xu, who earned silver in 52.32-seconds. Murphy’s time was 52.39 seconds. He won this event in 2016, in Rio, and finished with another bronze in Tokyo.
Afterwards, Murphy found out the gender of his future child: his wife Bridget, who’s expecting in January, held up a sign at La Defense Area that said “It’s A Girl.”
“That really brought this night up to a whole other level,” he says.
American Lilly King finished fourth in the 100-m breaststroke, the event she won at the Rio Olympics and remains the current world record holder in. She finished with a bronze in Tokyo, but was in good spirits in Paris despite just missing a medal. In the runup to Tokyo, she was burned out. “I know this race happened three years ago, but it completely broke me,” she said. ‘I don’t feel broken tonight.” Heats in the 200-m breaststroke start Wednesday.
She’s Ledecky’s heir apparent as the standout performer in global women’s swimming. And with the 200-m butterfly and the 200-m IM still to come, she’s far from done in Paris. “Every single time I get to race on the world stage, I and more handling it mentally, physically, and emotionally. And try not to get too high or too low based on my race results. Obviously, I’m super happy with the result. But now, I’m all the 200 fly.”
