INDIANAPOLIS – Katie Ledecky slid through a pristine pool here Saturday evening, past helpless peers, on her way to her fourth Olympic Games.
She led a pursuing American pack by one body length, then three, as she has done continuously for more than a decade.
She swam 400 meters in 3:58.35, hit the wall to loud cheers and qualified for Paris 2024.
But she will be an underdog there.
Ledecky, 27, has become semi-accustomed to the once-foreign role since 2021, when Australia’s Ariarne Titmus dethroned her in the 400m freestyle in Tokyo. Titmus beat Ledecky by 0.67 seconds in a race for the ages at those Olympics. The following spring she took Ledecky’s world record and a new balance of power emerged in the 400.
Ledecky ruled there from 2013 to about 2019. However, Titmus is now the queen. She and Canadian teen phenom Summer McIntosh traded the world record in 2023. Titmus has re-established herself as the woman to beat after a health scare last fall. The 23-year-old Tasmanian posted a time of 3:55.44 at the Australian trials earlier this week, just 0.06 seconds off her world record – which she could well lower in Paris.
Ledecky, meanwhile, remains a gold medal favorite in the 1,500 and 800 freestyles. She will certainly qualify for these two signature events here in the coming week at American Trials, which have gone from a basketball arena in Omaha to an NFL behemoth thanks in small part to her star power. She is widely considered the greatest female swimmer ever, the one whose face and name are causing a roar here at Lucas Oil Stadium. She could extend or break all kinds of Olympic records this summer.
Even in the 400, she has maintained a sub-4:00 potential well into her 20s.
And that, her coach, Anthony Nesty, told Yahoo Sports, “is certainly a testament to her character. Her passion for the sport. To perform at a high level for so long, and the event she swims, it’s all about will.”
Ledecky has said publicly that she was satisfied with her times in Tokyo. But people close to her said she was somewhat dissatisfied. “She was probably disappointed in her swims last time,” Nesty told Yahoo Sports last month. So not long after returning home, she made a big leap across the country: from Stanford to Nesty at the University of Florida.
There she refined her stroke. She has chiselled her body. And she fell even deeper in love with the routine.
“I love the workout,” she recently told CBS. “Really, if the competitions didn’t exist, I think I would still love it.”
Got them better? Could she possibly even haunt her past self?
We will discover that in Paris.
Her 2016 shadow is probably untouchable. However, her shadow for 2021 is within reach.
She’s also gotten used to these kinds of chases. “I’ve been competing with myself for years,” she told NBC this spring. This is still the case on longer distances.
But now, in the 400, she’s chasing an Australian, Titmus – and possibly a Canadian, McIntosh – who may be just out of reach.
