Since winning the 800 in London four years ago, she has been invincible, and anything but a victory for the 19-year-old would have been one of the biggest shocks of the Games.
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Heading into Friday, Katie Ledecky had already claimed two individual gold medals at the Rio Olympics.
Katie Ledecky shattered her own world record in the 800 freestyle at Rio with a performance so dominant that competitors were swimming in the other direction at one point. Boglárka Kapás of Hungary came in third at 8 minutes, 16.37 seconds.
The degree of difficulty for Phelps, 31, as he tried to win a fourth consecutive Olympic title was compounded by the cumulative fatigue from his gold-medal turns this week in two relays, the 200 butterfly and the 200 individual medley.
“It’s been a great four years and I know I can have another great four years and I know that I will have a lot of people supporting me”. The Los Angeles Times says Ledecky “now holds the 13 fastest times ever in the event”. Four years earlier she was the youngest athlete in the USA delegation, but even then the 15-year-old had won Gold in her pet event, the 800M, in London.
“I just take it one race at a time whatever that means”.
Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky & Co. made sure the US stayed firmly atop the swimming world. She set an wonderful record with a time of eight minutes and 4.79 seconds. Sjostrom herself had won Gold in the 100M butterfly 2 days before but when competing against the 19-year-old torpedo, Sarah knew there was going to be only one victor. If the gold medals won by Maryland athletes were subtracted from the United States gold medals, Maryland would rank second.
“The best team did not win today”, she said.
The American joined Debbie Meyer as the only women to sweep the three longer freestyle events at the same Olympics. Then, after her coach moved to the West Coast, Ledecky hooked up with Bruce Gemmell and never missed a beat. “I just wanted to push myself and see what I could do”.
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That Welsh medal haul now could be broken in Rio with more than a week of competition still remaining. “There were nights where I would go to bed and think about this day and how much fun I’ve had these past four years and start crying”. Since the London Games, she has lowered the world record in the event four times – by nearly eight seconds.
