PARIS — Katie Ledecky has been so persistent in her dominance of distance swimming that, with each stroke here at the 2024 Olympics, with each lap, each race, there was history to be made.
Her last of four finals only added to her legend. Ledecky won the 800-meter freestyle on Saturday, holding off Australia’s Ariarne Titmus. She punctuated her Paris Games with her 14th career medal and ninth gold.
And she joined two exclusive clubs that contextualize her greatness.
She tied Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina for most golds won by a female Olympian.
She also equaled Michael Phelps, Carl Lewis, Al Oerter and a few foreigners as the only Olympians to win the same event four consecutive times.
This event, the 800, was the race that introduced Ledecky to America way back in 2012. She was 15 years old in London. "The first [gold medal] was totally unexpected by the outside world," she recalled here in Paris. But she "could visualize" it. And when she won it, she never looked back. She won the 800 without fail for more than a decade, at three straight Olympics and an unprecedented six straight world championships, often by margins that left her hopeless competitors entirely out of camera frames.
In February of this year, Canada's Summer McIntosh snapped Ledecky's streak at a domestic meet in Orlando. She broke up Ledecky's sole ownership of the top 25 women's 800-meter times in history. But McIntosh, a breakout star of Paris 2024, opted to instead swim the 200 individual medley on Saturday night.
So Titmus, winner of the 400 freestyle, was Ledecky’s only real challenger.
At their respective Olympic trials, Titmus had actually been slightly faster, finishing in 8:14.06 to Ledecky's 8:14.12. But Ledecky is Ledecky, still the queen of distance swimming. Titmus was "buggered," she said Friday; Ledecky, on the other hand, is impervious to fatigue or pressure. Once she surged to an Olympic-record time in the 1500 on Wednesday, there was little doubt she'd top yet another podium.
Ledecky, then, will leave Paris with two more golds, a silver and her first Olympic bronze. She will surely take some time off, but not a lot; one of the themes of her week, and her comments throughout 2024, is how much she feels at home, and alive, in the water. She has said she wants to continue swimming through Los Angeles 2028, and perhaps even beyond. "I don't feel like I'm close to being finished in the sport yet," she said Wednesday.
And there, on home soil, she could carve out a new Olympic club of her own. No woman nor man has ever won the same Olympic event five times running. Cuban wrestler Mijaín López could be the first in Paris next week. Ledecky could join him, or become the first, in 2028.
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