It wasn't even close.
With a record-breaking performance within the 1,500-meter freestyle on Wednesday, Katie Ledecky won her first gold medal of the 2024 Summer Olympics, tying Jenny Thompson's eight profession gold medals – probably the most ever won by an American woman in an Olympic sport.
For Ledecky, it was the twelfth Olympic medal of her profession, tying her with Thompson, Natalie Coughlin and Dara Torres for probably the most medals won by an American athlete in a profession.
“I am so honored to represent our country,” Ledecky said on the NBC broadcast afterward. “These women who have set the standard for so many years have inspired me. They inspired me when I started swimming. Thank you to them and to everyone who has supported me throughout the years.”
Ledecky led from start to complete, lapping all her competitors and ending ten seconds ahead of France's Anastasiia Kirpichnikova, who took silver.
Ledecky's time of 15:30.02 beat her own Olympic record by five seconds. In the 1,500-meter freestyle, also often called “the mile,” Ledecky holds the 20 fastest times of all time and hasn't lost a race in 14 years.
“I'm proud of the time,” she told NBC. “I really wanted to swim a time that I could be really proud of and happy with.”
Thompson, who swam at Stanford within the Nineteen Nineties, and Coughlin, a standout Cal swimmer within the early 2000s, were each present on the race.
“I can't wait for her to join the 12-medal club,” Coughlin said on the show.
“I'm just in awe of being here and watching Katie swim,” Thompson said. “She's at a level that's way above me in my eyes. It's a dream to be here watching her swim the mile and to be there for her.”
Ledecky is taken into account the favourite for one more gold medal within the 800-meter freestyle, which begins on Friday. She has won the last three gold medals in that event.
With her ninth gold medal, she would tie Larisa Latynina of the USSR for probably the most gold medals ever won by a girl on the Olympic Games.
Ledecky also won a bronze medal within the 400-meter freestyle last week.
During her race on Thursday, NBC chronicled her swimming profession and calculated that she swam greater than 23,000 miles, almost the circumference of the Earth.
The 27-year-old has also spoken about competing within the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Huske at the highest of the Olympic rankings
She was the primary American woman to win a person gold medal on the Paris Olympics, and now Torri Huske is the leading Olympic medalist.
Huske, a third-year student at Stanford who’s taking a 12 months off to give attention to swimming, surprised the swimming world on Thursday when she won a silver medal within the 100-meter freestyle.
It was her third medal on the Games, making her the primary athlete on the 2024 Olympics to win three medals. She also won gold within the 100-meter butterfly and silver within the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.
Thursday's race featured two of the perfect 100-meter freestyle swimmers of all time. Huske competed in a field that also included world record holder Sarah Sjöström of Sweden and Siobhan Bernadette Haughey of Hong Kong, who holds the third fastest time ever recorded within the race.
But it was Huske who held the lead for 90 metres. She had a fantastic jump and a fair higher turn as she pulled away within the last quarter of the race, but her pace dropped in the ultimate 20 metres and Sjöström upped the ante.
Sjöström caught her on the finish line, her outstretched hand touching the wall a split second before Huske, and finished in 52.16 to Huske's 52.29. Haughey finished in 52.33 to take bronze.
The incontrovertible fact that Huske got so close was especially impressive since she was swimming on the skin lane, where it’s harder to avoid the waves that bounce off the side partitions and slow swimmers down.
The 30-year-old Sjöström had not won a gold medal since Rio 2016.
“I didn't think I could win,” she said afterwards on the NBC show. “I've accomplished a lot in my career, but I've never been as surprised as I was here.”
She said she hadn't competed in a 100-meter freestyle race for several years until she began training for it just a few weeks ago.
After the race, she checked out the scoreboard to see the outcomes and appeared shocked. She began to slap the water in disbelief.
“I came here for the 50 meters,” she said on the show. “I did my job. I never thought a 30-year-old could win it. I thought you had to be 20 or something.”
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