Katie Ledecky Breaks World Record in 1500 Meters

Cochrane, who specializes in the longer events of the 800 and 1,500 free, also noticed something different about Sunday. Bravo for dreaming big.

Then along came Ledecky. “But I overcame them with my coach Zhang Yadong and foreign coach Brain”. “Being world champion hasn’t sunk in quite yet, I am so happy”. None, it is safe to say, included a sixth-place finish in a semifinals.

All you needed to be certain of that was to see what Ledecky did Tuesday with nearly no rest assured. To traverse the oceanic gulf between swimming for fun, as part of a high school, col legiate or club team, and swimming for performance bonuses as a sports-styled entrepreneur requires a self-centeredness that is not second nature to Franklin. There are distance swimmers, and there are sprinters. She turned it on for the 30th and final lap, a 29.02.

It was what she pulled off 32 minutes later in the semifinals of the 200 free.

She even has her own jersey. It was 6:40 now.

“It was hard. A pile of bricks came down on me in the last five meters”, Van der Burgh said.

Australia won the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay, with the Netherlands and the United States taking silver and bronze.

“Athletes have been caught doping in other countries, like Australia, but not much is made of that and I think it’s disrespectful to China”.

“Tomorrow”, she said, “is going to be a tough day”.

“I noticed people were going pretty fast and I probably stepped up my effort more than I would have liked”, Grevers said. “I only have 2,000 meters left of racing this week”. “And hopefully I can push him as best as I can”.

Having now retained both her 400m and 1500m freestyle world titles, Ledecky has Wednesday morning off before the 200m final and will be back in action in Friday’s 800m freestyle heats.

“I’m not surprised but it was not something that was expected”, Gemmell said of the record.

“I think this is a very dirty thought”.

There was still a medal ceremony for the 1,500 to follow. She was just 15-years-old – the youngest gold medal-winning swimmer in London. But her voice dropped out from time to time, her mouth going still.

“I knew I had some catching up to do but I kept fighting right to the end and it paid off”. She speaks mostly in unemotional tones and approaches her training and races with the measured style that is extremely rare in someone so young.

Adam Peaty gave Britain its first gold medal in the temporary pool at Kazan Arena with a comeback victory in the 100 breaststroke.

As she swims, she has said, she listens to the water, to the rhythm of her chop – in order to lock her into her chosen pace.

China won two more gold medals in diving. Singular feats of human achievement never grow mundane, and what Ledecky, 18, would produce on this sleepy morning was her eighth world record in the past two years.

The 18-year-old, who also holds the 400 and 800-metre records, clocked 15 min 27.71 sec to better the 15:28.36 secs she swam at the Pan-Pacific Games in August past year.

As Lotte Friis, the 2011 1500m world champion, told Reuters: “Katie is a monster and she has just proved that we don’t stand back”.