Twelve years later, she’s among the oldest American swimmers in Paris at 27. No introductions needed. She’s still winning, of course, and her name is known across this planet and probably also on some neighboring ones.
Her dominant win in the women’s 1,500-meter freestyle Wednesday night at Paris La Défense Arena was among the easiest sure-thing, can’t-miss, bet-the-house locks of these Olympics. She won gold, her first of these Summer Games, by finishing more than 10 seconds ahead of the field. She successfully defended her Olympic title and lowered her Olympic record in one of her signature races.
“It’s not easy,” she said. “It doesn’t get any easier. I do try to enjoy it each year. There’s different perspective that I have different years and different challenges that you face each year in training and as you get older.”
Ledecky has lowered the world record in the 1,500 six times and has now turned in the 20 fastest races the event has ever seen. Wednesday’s winning time of 15 minutes 30.02 seconds was well short of the world record she set in 2018 (15:20.48) but still more than seven seconds faster than her time from the U.S. trials (15:37.35).
It was Ledecky’s eighth career gold, spanning four Olympics, tying the Bethesda, Md., native with fellow American Jenny Thompson for the most by a female swimmer. And it’s her 12th Olympic medal of any color, which draws her even with Thompson, fellow Americans Dara Torres and Natalie Coughlin and Australian Emma McKeon for the most by a female swimmer.
“I try not to think about history very much or any of that,” Ledecky said. “But I know those names, those people that I’m up with. They’re swimmers that I looked up to when I first started swimming. It’s an honor to just be named among them.”
She’ll have two chances to pull in front of that talented pack. Ledecky, who took bronze in the 400 free Saturday, swims the 4×200 freestyle relay Thursday and then closes her Paris meet with the 800 free, with semifinals scheduled for Friday and the final on Saturday.
When Ledecky saw her winning time Wednesday, uncharacteristically, her emotions got the best of her. She pounded the pool surface with her right arm as she splashed her name across more pages of the Olympic record book.
It was the eighth-fastest 1,500 time ever and Ledecky’s fastest in more than a year. When she left the pool, she pumped her fist and raised both arms into the air.
“It’s never easy to win a gold medal,” she said, “so just trying to soak in every moment of it.”
Her win was part of an especially busy and memorable night at the pool. France’s Leon Marchand lit up the crowd, winning two gold medals and setting Olympic records in the 200 butterfly and the 200 breaststroke. China’s Pan Zhanle set the first world record of this Paris meet, smashing his own mark in the 100 free by 0.40 seconds with a time of 46.40. And Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom, swimming in her fifth Olympics, won her first gold in the 100 free by out-touching American Torri Huske at the wall. Huske took silver, her third medal of these Games.
For Ledecky, the excitement started stirring before she set foot on the pool deck. She watched that women’s 100 free that kicked off the night and said she got fired up watching Huske sprint to the wall. Three days after taking gold in the 100 butterfly, the 21-year-old Arlington, Va., native was pleased with her race, finishing with a time of 52.29 seconds, just 0.13 seconds behind the 30-year-old Swede.
“As proud as I am of my 100 fly, I am equally as proud of my 100 free,” Huske said. “After semis, I realized everyone was so close and it was anyone’s game. I love to race and I think the competition brought out the best in me.”
Ledecky would enter her race with decidedly different expectations. She hadn’t lost a 1,500-meter race in more than 14 years; she’s nearly dried off by the time her competitors hit the wall for the final time.
The women’s 1,500 meters, which made its Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games, is unlike any other on the Paris program. It requires discipline, dedication and persistence and tends to grind up lesser athletes. It’s not the type of race that elite swimmers choose to stick with for years, but it will go down as a key part of Ledecky’s legacy, an event that illustrates more than any other how dominant of a long-distance freestyler she is.
She’s as reliable as a metronome, her strokes — more than 1,200 of them throughout the race — rhythmic and melodic and powerful. Once she built a comfortable lead over the first 300 meters Wednesday, Ledecky settled into a steady pace. Her next 23 50-meter split times all fell between 31.10 and 31.69 seconds.
She led Anastasiia Kirpichnikova, the Russian-born French swimmer, by a car length early. Then by a bus. Then an 18-wheeler. Ledecky had a nearly five-second advantage at the halfway mark and just kept pushing. By the final lap, she was several train cars ahead of Kirpichnikova and the rest of the field.
As Ledecky made her way back and forth, she thought about her training at the University of Florida. She left Stanford following the Tokyo Games, relocated to Gainesville, Fla., and began working with Coach Anthony Nesty and his group of talented male freestylers. Ledecky passed the time in the pool repeating the names of the teammates who pushed her these past three years over and over, including Bobby Finke and Kieran Smith, fellow Olympians both of them.
“I know I make their lives hard some days, but they made my life a lot easier today,” she said with a laugh.
On the medal podium later, Ledecky sported a big, toothy smile with her hair tucked behind her ears. On the surface, the scene and the happy young champion sure didn’t look any different from 2012. To be sure, plenty has changed. Back then, no one expected her to win gold.
“Of course, coming into tonight, I expected it of myself,” she said. “I know a lot of other people expected it of me. And that doesn’t make it easy. It’s not easy to always follow through and get the job done. There’s moments of doubt, hard days of training where you doubt yourself. You just have to push through and trust your training. Trust that everything will come together in the end. I’m glad that it did today.”
