The American won the women’s 800-meter freestyle final in 8:04.79, beating her own world-record time by almost two seconds to become the second woman in history to win the 200, 400 and 800 freestyle races at the same Olympics.
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“I hit all my goals right on the nose this week, and I couldn’t be happier with how this week has gone”, she said. Despite teammate Ryan Lochte’s inkling that Phelps would be back in four years for Tokyo, the 27-time medalist says he’s done after Rio.
For Ledecky, special is routine.
She becomes just the second woman to complete a clean sweep the 200, 400 and 800m freestyles events having defended the title she won at London 2012 when she was just 15.
She is the first Olympian to take the 200m, 400m and 800m gold at one Games since another U.S. teenager, Debbie Meyer, achieved the feat at Mexico City in 1968 – the year the 800m was added to the programme.
“That’s pretty insane, what happens in eight years”, said Schooling, who attends the University of Texas. Since the London Games, she has lowered the world record in the event four times – by nearly eight seconds. “She was walking to the blocks with pure joy”.
The Pacific Island nation erupted with joy Friday after its rugby sevens team crushed Britain 43-7 in final in Rio de Janeiro.
Phelps, the most decorated athlete in Olympic history, couldn’t pull off one of his patented comebacks in the 100-meter butterfly, easily held off by a swimmer a decade younger. He grinned afterward, appeared relaxed and sounded at peace with the result. In third place was Boglarka Kapas, of Hungary. And I think in the future we’re going to look back, and the sport’s history will be divided into pre-Katie and post-Katie.
Phelps now has 22 gold medals, with 13 in individual races.
Ledecky had to stop; tears fell like raindrops from her eyes.
Some 23 seconds after Ledecky touched the wall, the last of the eight finalists finally ended the grueling race.
Not only is this the 19-year-old Team USA swimmer’s fourth medal of the Olympics but she also beat her own World Record!
The U.S. women face Sweden on Friday in the quarterfinals of the Rio Olympics soccer tournament – and that means a reunion with Sundhage, who now coaches the Swedish women. “My legs totally seized up”.
“It has taken a lot of time to get here and there have been times when I haven’t believed in myself but my family and the all of the support staff around me have believed in me from the bottom”.
“If [a runner] won the 10,000 meters by that wide a margin, they’d win by 100 meters”, Joyner continued.
It’s been a good 24 hours for Ledecky and her roommate in Rio – she’s staying with Simone Manuel, who swam to her own gold medal last night.
“I will be in Tokyo”, he said.
“This whole day has been kind of insane because it’s all of these little last things that I’ve gotten to do, like my last warmup with the girls at the training pool today”, DiRado said.
But once Ledecky is back in worldwide competition, there are a few obvious markers on her horizon. Her final 50-meter split of 28.99 was her second fastest of any lap in her individual events this week, excluding opening laps with a diving start.
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“Hopefully we’ll inspire people”, Ledecky said, “30 years down the road even when somebody’s breaking my records”.
