Summer McIntosh set for 400m freestyle final clash with Ledecky, Titmus at aquatics worlds

With nine different events on tap on the first day of swimming competition at the World Aquatics Championships on Sunday morning in Fukuoka, Japan, there was little doubt that the fourth and fifth heats of the women's 400-metre freestyle preliminaries would serve as the highlight.

Within the span of 10 minutes, former world record holder Ariarne Titmus of Australia breezed to a first-place finish in the fourth heat with a time of 4:01.39, setting the stage for American swimming legend Katie Ledecky (4:00.80) to edge 16-year-old Canadian phenom Summer McIntosh (4:01.72) in the fifth heat. Germany's Isabel Gose was the next closest competitor with a time of 4:03.02.

For the 26-year-old Ledecky, the 400m freestyle final will serve as her first opportunity to tie Michael Phelps's record of 15 gold medals at the World Aquatics Championships, which she will have more chances to add to as the favourite for both the 800m and 1,500m freestyle events later this week.

The seven-time Olympic gold medallist was denied an eighth at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 when Titmus topped the podium, then saw her world record time of 3:56.46 — set at the 2016 Games — fall to the now 22-year-old at the 2022 Australian Swimming Championships, with Titmus clocking in at 3:56.40.

WATCH | Stacked field set to compete in women's 400m freestyle:

While a then-14-year-old McIntosh set a Canadian record of 4:02:42 to finish fourth at the Tokyo Olympics — edged by China's Li Bingjie who nabbed the last spot in Sunday's final — the Toronto native quickly staked her claim as a force to be reckoned with by breaking the four-minute mark for the first time in a silver-medal performance at last year's worlds in Budapest, Hungary, out-touched by Ledecky.

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