With Plenty Of Pain, Ledecky's Gain Is 200 Freestyle Gold

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RIO DE JANEIRO - This was a race, not a Katie Ledecky victory parade. It left her face contorted from exhaustion, the result of an effort that took every ounce of her physical and mental strength.

She had prevailed in a scintillating Olympic final of the 200-meter freestyle, the one individual event of her three in Rio where the challenge was an opponent, not the clock. She had held off the late surge of Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom, who had the fastest 200 in the world this season – until Tuesday night.

Ledecky had won her second 2016 Olympic freestyle gold and now seems virtually certain to join compatriot Debbie Meyer as the only women to win the 200, 400 and 800 freestyles in the same Olympics, with Meyer having done it in 1968.

“Katie is the queen of freestyle,” Sjostrom said.

The 800 remains, with the prelims Thursday and final Friday. The longer the distance, the more dominant Ledecky becomes.

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In Crushing The 400 Freestyle Field, Katie Ledecky Also Beat A Tougher Opponent: Her Own Goals

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RIO DE JANEIRO - It’s a good thing Katie Ledecky thinks competing against herself is fun.

Otherwise, there would be little about racing to keep her entertained.

After only 100 meters of Sunday’s Olympic final in the 400-meter freestyle, Ledecky was a body length ahead. Just that quickly, she had reduced the race to Katie against Katie, a chase of her own world record, in which she also became triumphant.

The numbers on her winning time would be so stunning they made bronze medalist teammate Leah Smith gasp. “3:56?” Smith could be seen saying as she congratulated Ledecky in the water after the race.

Ledecky had bypassed the 3:57s entirely.

The exact time was 3 minutes, 56.46 seconds, nearly two seconds faster than the mark (3:58.37) Ledecky had set at the Pan Pacific Championships two years ago. It was the largest drop in the 400-meter world record since 1976.

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Even Losing Her Footing In Defeat, Fencer Muhammad Still Stands Tall

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RIO DE JANEIRO – For Ibtihaj Muhammad, this was the long-awaited chapter in a lengthy narrative that had put her in a position of epic significance. It ended with her in an unremarkable position of discomfit, lying on a fencing strip at Carioca Arena 3 in the Olympic Park yet still standing for so much more.


It was just past noon on the third full day of the 2016 Olympics. A little more than an hour earlier, Muhammad had become the first woman in hijab to compete for the United States in an Olympics. That historic moment had been subsumed in her mind by the need to focus on her first match, in the round of 32, which she won 15-13.
 
Now it was match point in the round of 16, and Muhammad had lost her footing. She remained on her backside for the minute of official review before the referee awarded what would be the final point of a 15-12 score to her opponent, Cecilia Berder of France.
 
Down. And quickly out of the tournament for the Olympic saber title, an outcome not unexpected among fencing cognoscenti but unwanted for those who hoped for more exposure of the symbol Muhammad had become.
 
“I wouldn’t say I felt down and out,” Muhammad said. “At the end of the day, I realized that this moment of me in sport and representing my country and the Muslim community is bigger than myself.”

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"Not Superwoman But Pretty Super:" Ledecky Gets Silver Surprise In 400 Free Relay

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RIO DE JANEIRO - Four years ago this week, Great Britain’s Rebecca Adlington had a first-hand view of the moment that surprisingly was the start of the Katie Ledecky era in women’s swimming.
 
Saturday afternoon, on the opening day of swimming at the 2016 Olympics, Adlington had a different vantage point on another Ledecky swim that seemed equally surprising.
 
A near-repeat performance Saturday night brought Ledecky a silver medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle, an event in which there had been no guarantee she would compete.
 
“She’s just amazing,” Adlington said as she stood on a bus for the brief ride between the pool and the Main Press Center.

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Katie Ledecky: a (training) day in the life

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By Philip Hersh | Aug 4, 2016
Special to espnW.com

Here is what a typical training day looked like for Katie Ledecky in her final months of preparation for the 2016 Olympic Games. After completing two courses last fall at Georgetown University -- Comparative Political Systems and History of China I -- the Stanford-bound Ledecky went on hiatus from school until this September to concentrate on swimming.

Her normal weekly schedule included six days of swim practice and three days of dryland workouts. This schedule is based on a first practice at 5 a.m. ET in the 25-yard pool at Bethesda's Georgetown Prep, about eight miles (20 minutes with no traffic) from her home in Bethesda, Maryland.

4:05 a.m.: Wake-up. "She has had to wake us up a couple times, but we've never had to wake her up," her father Dave said.

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