Ledecky performed a Phelpsian feat by winning the 200, 400, 800 and the non-Olympic 1,500 freestyle races to become the first four-time world champion at a single meet.
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Phelps will reportedly swim in the freestyle relay final on Sunday night, and Ledecky will swim in the preliminary heat on Saturday.
Ledecky, the 19-year-old Bethesda native, finished seventh in the women’s 100 freestyle event at the U.S. Olympic trials in June.
Ledecky is the favorite in the 200-meter, 400-meter and 800-meter freestyle events and will swim the anchor leg on the women’s 4×200-meter freestyle relay team.
The Rio 2016 Olympics will be Ledecky’s second Olympic appearance.
“We want to get back out there because last time we were like, ‘Holy (expletive), we have no idea what’s going on, ‘” he said. Meyer, a swim coach in the Sacramento area, sees Ledecky’s devotion to Catholicism playing a role in her overall well-being. She still keeps her goal times written down somewhere, she just won’t share the location.
However, a year after his retirement, Phelps announced his return to swimming. That would mark her first race of the Games.
“I don’t know”, she answered when asked what made her such a great swimmer. The pool star says he will come to Rio in 2016 as a spectator, not as an athlete Photo: Alex Ferro/Rio 2016™. Phelps wanted to take part at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships held in Kazan, but he was suspended from the national team due after driving a auto under alcohol.
The American has smashed the 800m world record four times in three years, taking Briton Rebecca Adlington’s previous benchmark of 8:14:10 down to the current 8:06.68.
“I think just in general, everybody on Team USA gets a little bit of a look”, she said. Crux reports that after Ledecky won a gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics, she and her mom visited the nuns at the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Bethesda to thank them for praying for her. The young swimmer is planning to do the same after the Rio Games.
In anticipation for the Games, the Montgomery County Sentinel was able to get into contact with former swimmer Mike Barrowman, one of three Olympic gold medalists from the county (Ledecky and former gymnast Dominique Dawes are the others.) Barrowman, a graduate from Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, won the 200m freestyle gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Barrowman: I had broken the American record in 1988 and was the first person from the D.C. area in a very long time to have a shot at a gold medal.
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“She swims like a guy”, Lochte told Sports Illustrated after training with Ledecky at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs (because, you know, men are inherently better at everything). “She does the work, and it shows, and I think that is something that is awesome to see”. “That is a real honor”, she said. It’s an astoundingly inspirational story – you should be screaming your lungs out for McFadden to sweep all seven of her events at the Rio Paralympics.
