Katie Ledecky makes history look easy as she breaks her world record in 800 freestyle
Among the 32 events contested at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium, none came with less drama than Katie Ledecky’s final race of the Summer Games.
The 19-year-old’s biggest competitor in the 800-meter freestyle Friday — the clock — hung from the stadium’s rafters high above blue and green seats. The question wasn’t if Ledecky would touch the wall first, but by how much she would break her world record in the test of endurance.
The youngest member of the U.S. Olympic swimming team, as usual, made history look easy.
Ledecky finished in 8 minutes, 4.79 seconds to better the mark set in January by almost two seconds — her second world record at these Games — and win her fourth gold medal.
“I just wanted to push myself and see what I could do,” she said. “The Olympics are the pinnacle of our sport and I have to wait four more years to have that moment again, so I wanted the last one to be special.”
For Ledecky, special is routine. She carried gold-plated expectations into the Games and somehow managed to surpass them.
The eight-minute cruise, along with her victories earlier in the week in the 200 freestyle and 400 freestyle, made her the first woman to sweep the three events at the same Olympics since U.S. swimmer Debbie Meyer did so at Mexico City in 1968. Ledecky also anchored the gold-medal-winning 800 freestyle relay for the U.S. and helped the 400 freestyle relay to silver.
But Friday’s victory provided the most compelling example yet of the extent to which Ledecky is dominating women’s swimming. In a sport where a second or two can be the difference between a gold medal and last-place finish, she beat second-place Jazz Carlin of Britain by more than 11 seconds.
“She’s an incredible athlete and she is going so fast, it leaves the rest of us having to scrape for the rest of the medals,” Carlin said.
The combined margin of victory in the 800 freestyle at the previous five Games was 11.76 seconds. Ledecky equaled that in one race — and now holds the 13 fastest times ever recorded in the event.
“We hadn’t seen Katie more excited the whole meet,” said David Marsh, coach of the U.S. women’s team. “She was walking to the blocks with pure joy.”
The joy Friday extended beyond Ledecky.
Michael Phelps, swimming in the final individual event of his career with retirement looming, finished the 100-meter butterfly in a three-way tie for silver behind Singapore’s Joseph Schooling. He grinned afterward, appeared relaxed and sounded at peace with the result.
“It’s what I had,” said Phelps, who has also won four golds at these Games and now has 27 Olympic medals. “It’s been a really long week and I knew it was going to be a tough one.”
His last swim, the 400 medley relay, is Saturday as the eight-day competition comes to an end.
After the race, Phelps stopped to embrace teammate Maya Dirado. Minutes earlier, the 23-year-old Stanford graduate who plans to retire after the Games as well, provided the most surprising result of the night.
Dirado swam down Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu, who starred at USC, in the final 25 meters of the 200 backstroke and touched the wall an instant before the race’s heavy favorite. Hosszu’s qualifying time in the event was a second and a half faster than Dirado and, to most, she appeared to be a Ledecky-style lock to win her fourth gold medal of the Games.
A look of shock covered Dirado’s face when she turned to look at the scoreboard with the result.
“I didn’t know who was going to get their hand on there first, but I was just thrashing my body as hard as I could,” said Dirado, who added the individual gold to her three other medals at the Games. “My legs totally seized up. But to look up and see the one next to my name was just so unreal. I can’t believe I did it.”
The surprises continued in the men’s 50-meter freestyle.
Anthony Ervin, the oldest U.S. man to swim an individual event in the Olympics since 1904, edged France’s Florent Manaudou at the finish, 21.40 seconds to 21.41.
Ervin, 35, is the oldest swimmer to win an individual gold medal, and this win comes 16 years after the Valencia native tied Gary Hall Jr. for gold in the same event at the Sydney Olympics.
“It’s surreal, kind of absurd and, you know, when I touched, turned around and saw the one next to my name, I kind of smiled and laughed,” Ervin said. “Then I wanted to show a little bit of emotion for the effort I’d put in, for my friends, for my family, for those watching at home and in the stands.”
Ledecky, usually reserved, couldn’t hold back the emotion either. Tears streamed down her face as the national anthem played during the medal ceremony, her history-making week finally over.
“Hopefully we’ll inspire people,” Ledecky said, “30 years down the road even when somebody’s breaking my records.”
For now, no woman is faster. And it’s not even close.
Follow Nathan Fenno on Twitter @nathanfenno
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