2025 Swammy Awards: Female Swimmer of the Year – Summer McIntosh

See all of our 2025 Swammy Awards here.

Would it be anyone else?

Summer McIntosh won four world titles, set three world records, and generally looked nigh-on invincible this year. Of the top seven swims in history in her main four events – 200 fly, 200 IM, 400 IM, and 400 free – so 28 in total, 11 came from McIntosh in the last nine months.

McIntosh was beaten in just one major race this year and that was the 800 free, a quinary event at best for her. Bear in mind that was quite possibly the best female race of this Millenium and she still swam the tenth-fastest time in history, and it’s hard to see that as too much of a black mark against her.

McIntosh had already been exceptional in 2024. Three Olympic titles in Paris, her second Games despite being just 17 years old, included Olympic Records of 2:06.56 in the 200 IM and 2:03.03 in the 200 fly. Silver in the 400 free made it four individual medals, the most ever by a Canadian and tied with Leon Marchand among swimmers at that edition of the Games.

She had set her obligatory World Record in the 400 IM at Canadian Trials, clocking 4:24.38 for her second record in two years. More were to come at the World Short Course Championships in December where she set a further three. McIntosh set new standards in the 400 free (3:50.25) and 200 fly (1:59.32), before shattering Mireia Belmonte‘s mark in the 400 IM, swimming 4:15.48 to take over three seconds off.

Four World Records, three Olympic titles, and three World short course titles. No swimmer combined for more individually in those three categories in 2024, and she had claimed her third consecutive major title in both the 200 fly and 400 IM. With Ariarne Titmus sitting the 2024-25 season out (before announcing her retirement later in 2025), McIntosh headed in 2025 as the fastest active swimmer in four events (200 fly, 200 IM, 400 IM, 400 free) and the second-fastest in two more (200 free, 800 free).

She kicked off this year at the Southern Zone Speedo Sectionals where she had also swum 12 months previously. This time she competed in just one event, the 800 free, but made it count. Her swim of 8:09.86 was a second and a half faster than in 2024 and made her just the second woman to break the 8:10 barrier. Her ceiling in the event was evidently even higher, but she was yet to swim the event at either a major championship or Canadian Trials.

Her next meet focused back on her core events, clocking a 2:04.00 200 fly, 2:07.42 200 IM, and a U.S. Open Record of 4:26.98 in the 400 IM at the Pro Swim Series in Westmont. The Fort Lauderdale stop saw her go 3:58.28 in the 400 free and 2:06.82 in the 200 back, faster in the former than she was at any point in 2024.

Canadian Trials was held 10 weeks later, a period of time she spent training with CN d’Antibes over in France, coached by Fred Vergnoux. She returned with a not-insignificant amount of joi de vivre, shattering Titmus’s 400 free World Record on the first night in 3:54.18 before adding further records in the 200 IM (2:05.70), 400 IM (4:23.65, her third record in the event in three years), the #2 swim all-time (at the time) in the 200 fly (2:02.26) and the #3 swim in the 800 free. She clocked 8:05.07 in that event, a massive personal best and one that put her seven seconds clear of the #3 swimmer all-time and less than one second behind Katie Ledecky.

The best single-meet performance in history? Perhaps, but there were World titles still to be won.

McIntosh started with the one which had eluded her so far. She won 400 free gold by two seconds in 3:56.26, off her World Record but still swimming the #5 time in history. The 200 IM followed one day later, again touching well ahead of the field in 2:06.69, the #7 swim all-time.

In the 200 fly, the event which she had been most open about her goals in, she again dominated as she touched an agonising 0.18 seconds off Liu Zige‘s super-suited record, one no one else has come within a second and a half of. Three seconds was the gap back to Regan Smith in second – a second more than the combined winning margins from 2009-2019.

Then came that 800 free race, where McIntosh won bronze in 8:07.29, the #10 swim in history. A return to the top step followed the next night in the 400 IM, where she won by eight seconds – a winning margin only enjoyed by Katie Ledecky over the last decade.

Four world titles took her to eight overall in just three years, 7th on the all-time list. Every swimmer ahead of her competed for at least a decade on the World stage, and the last time she was beaten in a 200 fly or 400 IM final she was just 15 years old. There seems absolutely nothing to suggest that her period of dominance will be short-lived.

Oh, and she then dropped two of the fastest swims in history in the 400 free (3:55.37, #2 all-time) and 200 fly (2:02.62, #4 all-time), in December, as part of a relatively busy schedule at the U.S. Open.

She ended the year with fifteen (15) swims which were top-ten all-time at the point she swam them.

Is there much more we can say? McIntosh was the best swimmer in the world last year. The 2025 edition is somehow even further away from comprehension.

Honorable Mentions:

• Katie Ledecky: We saw vintage Katie Ledecky this year, in argubly her best 12 months showing since 2016. Her first World Record for seven years came in May as she lowered her already-preposterous 800 free mark to 8:04.12, after clocking 3:56 in the 400 free and 15:24 in the 1500 free at the same meet. She was 8:05.76 in the 800 free at U.S. Nationals in June, #3 all-time at that point, before winning a pair of gold medals at Worlds in the 800 and 1500 free. She has not been beaten at a summer meet in those events since before her Olympic title in the 800 free back in 2012, and won the race of the century in that event against Lani Pallister and Summer McIntosh in Singapore. Ledecky was 15:26.44 in the 1500 free and won bronze in the 400, continuing decade-long medal streaks in both, and notched 1:53.71 anchoring the American-Record-setting 4×200 free relay. She is now the most successful swimmer ever at the World Championships with 16 gold medals – one more than Michael Phelps – and ended the year with an American Record of 14:59.62 in the mile at the self-titled meet. LA 2028 has a lot to look forward to from her.
• Marritt Steenbergen: Steenbergen defended her 100 free world title in Singapore, clocking 52.55 for the win, and was an absolute weapon on relays for the Dutch. Three 51-point splits, highlighted by a 51.64 to vault from 8th to 3rd in the 4×100 free, are more in a week than all but four swimmers (Cate Campbell, Emma McKeon, Emma McKeon, and Femke Heemskerk) have managed in their entire career. She delivered her best meet of the year at the end though, notching five European Records and four individual titles at the European Short Course Championships at the start of December. Those European Records belonged to two of the greatest swimmers in history – Sarah Sjostrom in the 100 free (50.42) and 200 free (1:50.33) and Katinka Hosszu in the 100 IM (56.26) and 200 IM (2:01.83) . She threw in the 50 back as well with a 25.47 leadoff in the 4×50 medley relay (because why not?) and sits in the top six in history in all five events. Steenbergen is delivering on the promise she showed as a junior in spades, and, whisper it quietly, looks well set to take over Inge de Bruijn‘s mantle as the Netherland’s best-ever female swimmer.
• Kaylee McKeown: Yet another set of world titles in the 100 back and 200 back, with McKeown reigning unbeaten when she has entered either event for six years now. The most clinical swimmer in the world right now, she added her fifth and sixth world gold medals in Singapore this summer including setting a new best of 57.16 in the 100, just 0.03 off the World Record. The 2:03.33 she swam in the 200 back was her fastest swim outside of Australia and a new World Championships Record, and yet again she did not look like losing. Australian Records in all three backstroke distances followed on the World Cup Tour in the fall, highlighted by a pair of World Records in the 200 back. She first reclaimed the record with a best of nearly a second in 1:57.87, before hacking another 0.54 seconds off to go 1:57.33 – nearly two seconds faster than anyone in history bar Regan Smith. Her move from Griffith University to USC Spartans in the spring looks an inspired one now.

PAST WINNERS:

• 2024 – Summer McIntosh (CAN)
• 2023 – Kaylee McKeown (AUS)
• 2022 – Katie Ledecky (USA)
• 2021 – Emma McKeon (AUS)
• 2020 – Kaylee McKeown (AUS)
• 2019 – Regan Smith (USA)
• 2018 – Katie Ledecky (USA)
• 2017 – Sarah Sjostrom (SWE)
• 2016 – Katie Ledecky (USA)
• 2015 – Katie Ledecky (USA)
• 2014 – Katie Ledecky (USA)
• 2013 – Katinka Hosszu (HUN)