A few vendors left their stations and crammed into the aisles.
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The United States women’s soccer team was eliminated by Sweden in a penalty shootout in the quarterfinals Friday, a startling loss for the four-time Olympic champions. And then came the legs, powerful and rhythmic, propelling her forward, her lead getting visibly wider by the minute.
The frenetic finishes in the swimming pool capped a day that included a big escape by the US men’s basketball team and a stunning loss by the women’s soccer squad. The heavily favored USWNT, which had won gold at the previous three Games and has never finished with less than silver, is heading home with no medal. And the Olympics doesn’t even have a women’s race in what’s frequently considered her best event, the 1,500-meter freestyle.
But this-the 800 final-was a where-were-you-when sports moment about to unspool.
Then she was off, diving into the pool.
Details about Katie Ledecky’s net worth revealed.
But no one budged as soon as Ledecky hit the water. The diving well re-opened just 2 1/2 hours before the start of the women’s 3-meter competition. What’s unbelievable is that she was already crushing the competition in the event, but she beat her own best time by so much. Minutes earlier, the 23-year-old Stanford graduate who plans to retire after the Games as well, provided the most surprising result of the night.
Ledecky’s records now make her the undisputed queen of the distance freestyle.
“Katie is a phenom”, said Ryan Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medalist. That’s a large part of why athletes keep getting “faster” over time. Her husband was ill, her father got injured.
One second, two seconds, three.
When it was all said and done, Katie Ledecky was legitimately nearly a half-length of the pool ahead of second place.
The fans were in a fever. China also set a world record in the velodrome prior to beating Russian Federation in the final of the women’s team sprint. She kept further setting the break-neck pace and pulling farther away from the field.
Katie Ledecky has done it again. The command whipped the crowd into a broiling froth. Even janitors, dropping their brooms, were now cheering Ledecky.
Ledecky also became only the third American woman to win four gold medals in a single Olympics, following fellow swimmers Amy Van Dyken and Missy Franklin.
On the medal stand Friday, the emotions swept over her. She looked like she could run a marathon.
“It felt good the whole way through”, she said. Tonight I felt like I was faster than I’ve ever been before. But that hasn’t stopped Ledecky.
It wasn’t long before someone asked her about the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. She switched to skeet shooting when double-trap was dropped from the Olympics. He sent me a message to tell me, and it was the first thing I saw when I walked out.
Nothing is guaranteed in swimming.
Hosszu settled for silver, denied in her bid for a fourth gold in Rio.
Her comments sparked protests on Russian social media at what some suggested was a deliberate attempt to provoke Russia by people hostile to its team’s presence at the games following reports of wide-scale, state-sponsored doping in Russia.
After putting off college for a year to focus on the Olympics, she’ll head to Stanford in the fall and join fellow USA teammates Simone Manuel and Leah Smith.
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Rhode overcame four years of pain following the London Games to succeed on Friday. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information. Suddenly, Ledecky was contemplating years – the ones that have passed and the ones still to come.
