She won her latest Gold, in the 800m freestyle, by a whopping 11 seconds. Her Olympic treble comes after a trio of individual golds at the 2015 Kazan worlds in 400m, 800m and 1,500m, which is not an Olympic distance.
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Jazmin Carlin of Great Britain won the silver and Boglarka Kapas of Hungary won the bronze. At the time, Washington was trailing by four runs. Ledecky has also won gold medals in Rio in the 200m and 400m freestlye events as well as the 4×200 freestyle relay. Meyer accomplished the feat first at age 16 during the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City.
“I hit all my goals right on the nose this week, and I couldn’t be happier with how this week has gone”, said Katie. She also has the 4×200 relay gold and a 4×100 silver.
She won the race at London 2012 as a 15-year-old and she was a class apart in her heat here, touching the wall almost seven seconds clear of her rivals and then complaining she had not had enough sleep to be at her best.
While Phelps’ loss left the crowd in shock, Katie Ledecky got them on their feet again with another dominating performance, handily breaking the world record in the 800 freestyle. For a non-swimmer it is impossible to imagine what this domination means so let’s try and explain it better.
“I think I was prepared for any circumstance, whether we were ahead or behind”. Then, after her coach moved to the West Coast, Ledecky hooked up with Bruce Gemmell and never missed a beat.
Regardless, she managed to take home a gold medal for the 800-meter freestyle.
“In some ways”, she said.
“I just wanted to lay it all out there”, Ledecky said.
Though Ledecky deferred a year to train for the Olympics, the 19-year-old has committed to Stanford University. They all touched in 51.14 – a half-body length behind Schooling’s winning time of 50.39.
Her potential is hard to believe and borders on insanity.
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American Kayla Harrison successfully defended her Olympic judo title in the women’s 78-kilogram division, beating France’s Audrey Tcheumeo in a tense final. He sent me a message to tell me, and it was the first thing I saw when I walked out. Ledecky now heads to the West Coast to study at the prestigious Stanford College on a swimming scholarship. It’s not winning an Olympic medal, it isn’t setting a world record, it wasn’t becoming the best in the world. “I just knew that these three girls were going to put me in a good position to finish it out and I knew I could do it”, she added.
