the toughest the invincible the unbeatable

#The toughest the invincible the unbeatable pro
#The toughest the invincible the unbeatable free

While it’s still unlikely any other swimmer can challenge an in-form Ledecky in the 800 free or the 1500 free, newly added to the Olympic schedule, she will have to fend off Titmus in a 400 free rematch. Still, Ledecky will face challenges that she will face in her journey to the Tokyo Olympics, challenges harder than they dealt with in 2016. Katie Ledecky’s Threats and Her Chances at History “ It all feels like we’re really gearing up in a good way.”īut no one can ignore how good she has been this week and the signs pointing to a return to unfaltering dominance. The last two weeks, we’ve kind of called it a training camp, even though we haven’t been able to go anywhere,” she said. Training’s been going great, and I’ve just been getting a lot of really good work in. Finally, to wrap up her weekend, Ledecky swam a 54.22 to finish second in the 100 free.įrom Ledecky’s perspective, everything is fairly normal this week, on track towards the summer with nothing out of the ordinary. That’s faster than the 15:40.89 that Quadarella swam to win the 2019 world title in Ledecky’s absence. She wasn’t close to world record pace, but only two other women have ever beaten that time, and no one besides Ledecky has been that quick in six years. Ledecky dominated the 1500 free and swam a time of 15:40.55, the 14th-fastest performance in history. Still, whenever she’s in the pool and swimming fast, you check out the world record pace. Of the 25 occasions a woman has broken 4:00 in the events, Ledecky is responsible for 20 of them. This was the 13th-fastest swim of her career, her second-quickest in-season time and-most significantly-her fastest performance in any meet since 2018. Ledecky swam a 3:59.25 in the 400 free, a time very much “routine” by her standards. This time, Ledecky crushed the field by more than 3.5 seconds. Her previous in-season best came a few months before the 2016 Olympics when she was racing eventual Rio silver medalist Sarah Sjostrom head-to-head. In Mission Viejo, Ledecky swam a 1:54.40 in the 200 free, the second-quickest mark of her career behind the 1:53.73 she swam on her way to Olympic gold in Rio.

#The toughest the invincible the unbeatable pro

We saw hints at the last Pro Series in San Antonio, when she swam an 8:13.64 in the 800 free-a time which no one else has ever beaten. Finally, she felt well enough to race the 800 free, and she fought tooth and nail to overcome Simona Quadarella of Italy over the final 100 meters to win her only gold medal of the meet.īut the Ledecky that showed up in Mission Viejo looked more like teenage Ledecky than she has in several years. She suffered her first 400 free defeat in seven years when Australia’s Ariarne Titmus ran her down over the final 100 meters, and then she was forced to withdraw from both the 1500 free and 200 free. She took down the 1500 free record by five seconds at the Pro Series meet in Indianapolis with a 15:20.48, and she also posted the second-fastest time of her career in the 400 free (3:57.94) and her third-best mark in the 800 (8:07.27) that weekend.īut just a year later, Ledecky faced arguably her toughest challenge yet when she dealt with illness at the 2019 World Championships. After a dominant two years of college swimming at Stanford, she promptly broke a world record in her first race as a pro. If she had any setbacks along the way, no one ever noticed.īut while the post-2016 Ledecky still accumulated wins and gold medals, she didn’t have the same record-breaking edge every time out. The leadup to the 2016 Olympics saw Ledecky go on a record-smashing streak that culminated in Rio.

Today, Ledecky is 24, which means her third Olympic Trials coming up will mark nine years since she stunned the country by annihilating the 800 free field in Omaha to make her first Olympic team and then stunned the world by knocking off Rebecca Adlington for Olympic gold a few weeks after that. But at the TYR Pro Swim Series in Mission Viejo, fans have saw a bit of the swagger and mystique that carried Ledecky to an Olympic gold at age 15, four more golds at age 19 and 14 world records between the ages of 16 and 21. Katie Ledecky is not “back.” That would imply she was ever anything but history’s most dominant freestyler and the world’s best female swimmer, which is simply not the case. Katie Ledecky and Her Unbeatable Mystique Pushing Toward Tokyo