Ledecky won her second gold medal of the Olympics in the 200 meter freestyle finals Tuesday night.
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“She’s the Queen of Freestyle”, said Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden, who was second in 1:54.08, with Emma McKeon of Australia third in 1:54.92.
Ledecky has taken her tally of medals at Rio to three, having won 4x100m freestyle relay silver this week.
RIO DE JANEIRO – Years from now, it will be hard to imagine that there were questions about what Michael Phelps might do here at age 31, in his fifth Olympics.
Phelps’ powered to a 1 minute, 53.36-second clocking for his 24th overall Olympic medal.
Ledecky was not as dominant as she was in winning the 400-meter freestyle, a race in which she shattered her own world record, on Sunday with a winning time was 3:56.46. The U.S. men’s basketball team cheered for Phelps as he took the lead, and when the American touched the wall first, winning his 20th gold medal, he did a Dikembe Mutombo finger-wag. “I came pretty close to throwing up the last 50”.
Ledecky is trying to become only the second female after Debbie Meyer in 1968 to capture the three longest freestyle events at a single Olympics. She reigns supreme in her final individual event, the 800 freestyle, which she won at London in 2012. Le Clos and Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh, could win all the medals they wanted, but they counted about as much as a golf trophy in a tournament Tiger Woods wasn’t playing in during the early 2000s.
JUDO HISTORY: Hungarian-born Szandra Szogedi made history when she stepped onto the judo mat.
The British claimed silver in 7:03.13, while Japan took the bronze in 7:03.50. New Zealand is a 12-time world series champion and one of the top contenders for the first rugby medals awarded at an Olympics in 92 years.
Italy’s Federica Pellegrini, who set the world record in 2009 in the era of the now-banned high-tech bodysuits, was fourth in 1:55.18 – ahead of China’s 2014 Asian Games champion Shen Duo.
Coming into the Olympics games, swimming analysts thought this would be Ledecky’s toughest individual race of the four to win.
“It feels like gold that I’m after her”, she said of Ledecky.
Needless to say, he was a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitle excited in watching his niece win her second event in two tries. “Once I was ahead I knew I wasn’t going to let it out of my hands”.
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The Bethesda teen also is swimming in the 800 freestyle relay Wednesday, giving her a chance to join Amy Van Dyken and Missy Franklin as the only American women to win four gold medals in one Games. “That race was my bread and butter, and just to see the No. 1 by my name in the 200 fly one last time, I couldn’t have scripted it any better”.
