Katie Ledecky smashes 400-meter freestyle world record
RIO DE JANEIRO — Since she last lowered her world record in the women’s 400-meter freestyle, 24 months ago in Gold Coast, Australia, Katie Ledecky has graduated from high school, enrolled at Stanford, had her wisdom teeth pulled and blossomed into the dominant female swimmer of her era. She has lowered her own world records in the 800 free by nearly 4½ seconds in that span and in the 1,500 free by almost nine — but the 400 mark withstood every challenge from every single swimmer capable of taking it down.
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Which is to say, Ledecky — and only Ledecky — had come close but had not been able to get under it.
On Sunday night, in her first individual final of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, 19-year-old Katie Ledecky finally took down 17-year-old Katie Ledecky, her only real competition, in the 400. And it was a rout.
Ledecky, the freestyle phenom from Bethesda, won her first gold medal of these Games, torching the field in the final of the 400 free at Olympic Aquatics Stadium with a stunning time of 3:56.46, winning by nearly five seconds over Britain’s Jazz Carlin. U.S. teammate Leah Smith took the bronze. Ledecky punctuated her swim by pumping her right fist after looking up to see her time.
“To see the 56 up there feels really good,” she said.
As is clear to anyone who has been paying attention, Ledecky’s chief adversary — at least at distances of 400 meters and up — is not so much the seven other swimmers on the starting blocks but the digitally rendered time staring down from the scoreboard up above, reminding everyone of Ledecky’s own world record.
With the 12th long-course world record swim of her career, Ledecky finally took down her 2014 mark of 3:58.37. It was apparent its hours were growing short after Ledecky clocked a 3:58.71 in the afternoon preliminary heats. Though she paced the qualifying by more than four seconds, a “lackadaisical” — her word — final stroke may have cost her the record.
“That’s the easiest it’s felt going under four minutes,” Ledecky said after that swim. “So that bodes well for tonight.”
When Ledecky says something “bodes well for tonight,” the swimming world knows to be on world record alert. In her first three swims here — a pair of blistering 100s as the anchor leg in the prelims and final of the 4x100 free relay Saturday and her flirtation with her 400 free world record Sunday afternoon — she hinted at the potential for a historic week at these Olympics. And Sunday night’s massive swim drove it home.
“It felt like a pretty similar swim to this [afternoon], and I knew I had a lot left at the end this [afternoon],” she said. “And I just let it all out.”
Ledecky’s was one of three world record swims on an electrifying night, with the others by Britain’s Adam Peaty in the men’s 100 breaststroke (57.13) and Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom in the women’s 100 butterfly (55.48).
Of Ledecky’s three world records, the one in the 400 had stood the longest by far. She broke it twice within a span of two weeks in August 2014 — the second coming at the Pan Pacific Championships in Australia — but she had not bettered it since despite taking another 20 or so cracks at in those two years. In that same span, she has broken her own records in the 800 and 1,500 (the latter of which is not contested for women in the Olympics) a total of five times — most recently six months and one year ago, respectively.
Her gold medal performance Sunday night, added to her 800 free gold in London in 2012, already makes Ledecky just the sixth American woman to win individual swimming golds at two different Olympics — joining Martha Norelius (1924 and 1928), Janet Evans (1988, 1992), Brooke Bennett (1996, 2000), Natalie Coughlin (2004, 2008) and Rebecca Soni (2008, 2012).
With Ledecky’s win Sunday night, the “Star-Spangled Banner” played at Olympic Aquatic Stadium for the first time in the meet, and it is already painfully clear how critical she is to the U.S. team’s hopes of holding on to its customary spot atop the overall medal list for swimming. A year ago, at the world championships in Kazan, Russia, she accounted for four of the five individual medals earned by American swimmers.
Still to come are additional gold chances in the 200 free, 800 free and 4x200 free relay. Win them all, and she would be only the third American woman, after Amy Van Dyken (1996) and Missy Franklin (2012), to win four golds in a single Olympics. Only Franklin has won four golds plus an additional medal (a bronze for Franklin).
Next up for Ledecky: the 200 free, with heats Monday afternoon, semifinals Monday night and final Tuesday night. Though she held the top spot in the world rankings for much of the year with a 1:54.43 from January, she was passed last month by Sjostrom (1:54.34). Their expected duel for the gold here in the 200 is one of the most anticipated races of the Olympics meet.
But already this week it has become clear: the Ledecky of August 2016 is not the Ledecky of 2014 or the Ledecky of January or even the Ledecky of June’s Olympic trials. She is better than all of them.
Credit: Washingtonpost.com