PARIS — Katie Ledecky has been so persistent in her dominance of long-distance swimming that with every stroke here at the 2024 Olympics, with every lap, with every race, there was history to be made.
Her last of four finals only added to her legend. Ledecky won the 800 freestyle on Saturday, edging out Australian Ariarne Titmus in 8:11.04 to Titmus’ 8:12.29. Teammate Paige Madden took bronze in 8:13.00.
Ledecky capped her Paris Games with her 14th career medal and ninth gold.
And he joined two exclusive clubs that contextualize his greatness.
She tied Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina for the most gold medals won by a female Olympian.
He also tied Michael Phelps, Carl Lewis, Al Oerter and a few foreigners as the only Olympians to win the same event four consecutive times.
That event, the 800 meters, was the race that introduced Ledecky to the United States in 2012. She was 15 in London. “The first one[gold medal]was totally unexpected to 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 meters without fail for more than a decade, at three consecutive Olympics and an unprecedented six consecutive world championships, often by margins that left her hopeless competitors completely out of the camera frame.
In February of this year, Canadian Summer McIntosh snapped Ledecky’s streak at a national meet in Orlando. She broke Ledecky’s sole hold on the top 25 women’s 800-meter times in history. But McIntosh, a rising star of Paris 2024, opted instead to swim the 200-meter individual medley on Saturday night.
So Titmus, the 400-meter freestyle winner, was Ledecky’s only real rival.
At their respective Olympic trials, Titmus had been slightly faster, finishing in 8:14.06 to Ledecky’s 8:14.12. But Ledecky is Ledecky — she remains the queen of long-distance swimming. Titmus was “exhausted,” she said Friday; Ledecky, on the other hand, is immune to fatigue or pressure. Once she ran an Olympic-record time in the 1,500 meters on Wednesday, there was no question she would climb back to the top of the podium.
Ledecky will then leave Paris with two more golds, a silver and her first Olympic bronze. She will surely take some Free time, but not much of it; 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 keep swimming through Los Angeles 2028, and perhaps even beyond. “I don’t feel like I’m anywhere near done with my career in this sport yet,” she said Wednesday.
And there, on home soil, she could forge her own Olympic club. No woman or man has ever won the same Olympic event five times in a row. Cuban wrestler Mijaín López could be the first in Paris next week. Ledecky could join him, or become the first, in 2028.
