Pan Pacific Championships, Night Four Finals: Yu Yiting Holds Off Summer McIntosh in 200 IM, Begins Final Night With Upset
· David Rieder · 2026-08-16T02:26:35+00:00 · nguồn gốc
Pan Pacific Championships, Night Four Finals: Yu Yiting Holds Off Summer McIntosh in 200 IM, Begins Final Night With Upset
Pan Pacific Championships, Night Four Finals: Yu Yiting Holds Off Summer McIntosh in 200 IM, Begins Final Night With Upset
Two years ago in the Olympic final, Summer McIntosh used a stunning finish to pass Americans Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh and win her third gold medal. During the first final Saturday night at Pan Pacs, McIntosh appeared on track to pull off another comeback on the freestyle leg, with Walsh again among the competitors in the lead pack. This time, though, McIntosh could not quite catch up to Yu Yiting, a 20-year-old from China who earned the biggest win of her career.
Yu owned the lead in this race for most of the first 150-meters, only briefly surrendering the top spot to Regan Smith as the 100 backstroke world-record holder shined in her signature stroke. Yu split 37.52 on the breaststroke leg to move a half-second clear of anyone else coming home while Walsh went 37.10 to move from fourth place into a strong second. Walsh surged over the first half of the freestyle leg to put herself in contention with Yu, but McIntosh had one last surge left.
The Canadian, three days shy of her 20th birthday, had by far the best freestyle leg with her 29.89, and it appeared she would had enough to hold onto a gold medal. But Yu had a slightly better finish to get to the wall two hundredths ahead, 2:07.45 to 2:07.47.
Yu had previously won World Championship bronze medals in this event in 2023 and 2024, and this gold medal joins her Asian Games titles in both medley events from 2022 among her top accomplishments. Yu already owns the top time in the world this year with her 2:06.82 from June while McIntosh became the third-quickest swimmer globally. Walsh won bronze in 2:07.66, marking the fifth time she has earned a long course international medal in this event and good for fourth in the world in 2026.