Toronto swimmer Joshua Liendo scratches the surface at FINA World Cup

Joshua Liendo is used to turning heads in swimming circles.

He’s been setting age-group records since he was 13, put in an impressive Olympic showing in Tokyo at 18, and he’s the first Black Canadian swimmer to win a world championship gold medal — at the FINA short-course worlds last year.

But it’s what he achieved over the summer that he says really changed his mindset and vaulted him from rising star to top-tier competitor.

The Toronto-born swimmer stepped on the podium three times at the long-course worlds in June, including individual bronze medals in 100-metre freestyle and 100 butterfly. Then at the Commonwealth Games in August, just a couple of weeks before his 20th birthday, he won gold in 100-metre butterfly and three more bronze medals.

“Racing the best in the world and being able to not just keep up but excel, at that high level, means I kind of took a step forward,” Liendo said in an interview just before this weekend’s FINA World Cup at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre.

“It was a big shift in my mentality … from me looking at it saying, you know, I’m going to try to make it into (a semifinal or final) with these guys, to the point where I’m like: I’m going to try to beat these guys.”

That new outlook, he says, stays with him as he heads into every meet now, even though he knows getting on the podium is never guaranteed. At the World Cup in Toronto, he’s been the youngest swimmer in all of his finals. On Friday, he finished fourth in 50-metre freestyle and sixth in 100 butterfly. On Saturday, he booked the last spot in the 100 freestyle final and moved up two spots to finish sixth.

“It feels good — more racing, more fun,” he said right after Saturday’s race. “It’s great to race those guys. It’s a fast field.”

He has one more race Sunday: the 50-metre butterfly.

Liendo says that finally winning at the top world level in the summer changed how he mentally approaches racing. But he’s always been confident that he’d get there. In fact, “confident” and “positive” are the most common adjectives coaches use to describe him.

Heading into last summer’s Tokyo Olympics, his very first club swim coach recalled the day he meet Liendo, then just a grade schooler, and how confidently he announced plans to compete for Canada at the Olympics and win a medal.

A decade later, Liendo made it to the Tokyo Olympics, competed in five events and came achingly close to that medal, finishing fourth in the 4×100-metre freestyle relay.

In August, Liendo moved to study, train and compete in the NCAA system at Florida University after being recruited by the Gators head coach Anthony Nesty.

“I’m just going to try to keep moving forward,” Liendo said. “I’m so young and there’s so much to learn.”

With the likes of 16-year-old Summer McIntosh lighting up the world stage — chasing down American great Katie Ledecky and setting the second fastest time ever in the 400-metre freestyle here Friday night — the 20-year-old Liendo doesn’t seem that young at first glance. But he is, especially in the sprint freestyle and butterfly events where top athletes tend to take longer to mature, said Ryan Mallette, head coach of Swimming Canada’s high-performance centre in Toronto.

“He’s older than Summer, but to break though on the men’s stage in the events he’s in, it’s very similar in how young he is,” Mallette said. “He’s so positive and so driven. He’s poised for even more success.”

A little more time, too, may help.

“People are like: swimmers are small,” Liendo said. “No, you look at a 50 freestyler or 50 ’flyer and you’ll see, those guys are big.”

He’s hardly small himself at six-foot-four, but isn’t yet as strong as he wants to be.

“I know I’m going to mature more, and I’m not going to use it as an excuse that these guys are bigger. I just know I have some work to do.”

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