LEDECKY’S IMMENSE LEGACY IS INTACT, BUT IT WAS HARD WATCHING HER LOSE
She was smoked in the 400 free by younger Ariarne Titmus, known as The Terminator, and while she has more events, Ledecky is 27 and must win longer races as phenoms create three-second water gaps
She isn’t bothered by much. Swimming defines her humanity, practicing on Sunday mornings when her rivals are asleep, and refusing to ever drink alcohol or light a smoke. In college, Katie Ledecky would stay home at night and paint drawings, so even at 27, let’s assume she’ll be the last Olympian to find a scandal.
But one year at the Summer Games, she saw Michael Phelps heralded as “tying for silver in the 100 fly” when her name was below his in small print: “Ledecky sets world record in women’s 800 freestyle.” She wants women to reach a similar plateau, which explains why the biggest weekend event in Paris involved pitting her immense legacy against two younger and faster rivals. She ultimately won years ago, becoming the greatest female racer with seven gold medals, and if she wins three more, she’ll pass old-world Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina for the all-time lead among women.
Saturday night, as Phelps commented in the NBC compound, Ledecky thought she could beat Ariarne Titmus and Summer McIntosh in the 400-meter freestyle. “I like my chances. I’m going to give it my best shot,” she vowed, yet she failed, finishing third. Titmus is 23 and wore the yellow fingernails of her country, Australia, while praising Ledecky after smoking her at 3:57.49. Know how far behind she was at La Defense Arena with a time of 4:00.86?
“You can’t even see Katie Ledecky!” Rowdy Gaines said on the broadcast.
This is not the end. She could win the 800- and 1,500-meter freestyle and will race in the 4x200-meter relay. Joe Biden won’t be demanding a giveback of her Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. But to see Ledecky blown out was staggering, particularly after Titmus beat her for gold in Tokyo. The blaze in the pool is known as “The Terminator,” the first swimmer since 1928 to win gold twice in the event. Ledecky?
For the first time, she showed emotions at a news conference and thanked her training partners at the University of Florida. She no longer is the phenom and was gracious toward Titmus, though the Americans and Australians are raging at each other online and in the building. Ledecky is much larger in life than cowbells and rampaging idiocy.
“It’s a friendship, if anything,” she said. “We have a lot of respect for each other and we love competing against each other. It brings the best out of each of us and I’m sure, you know, pushes each of us in training knowing that we have each other to race at these kinds of meets.”
“I’m just happy to get the result for myself and I feel so honored to be a part of the race and be alongside legends like Katie,” Titmus said. “I look up to her so much as an athlete and it’s certainly not a rivalry beyond races. I really respect her as a person.”
But the champion grasps what she has accomplished. Gaines barely could speak. “Relief,” Titmus said. “It's a little bit more emotional, this one, than the first one. I know what it feels like to be an Olympic champion. It's a different feeling. I know how hard it is racing in these circumstances, at an Olympics. The noise, atmosphere, pressure — Olympic Village life definitely makes performing well hard. I probably felt the pressure for this race more than anything in my life, to be honest. And I'm definitely good at handling the pressure, but I've definitely felt it. The Olympics isn’t like anything else. It's not about how fast you go. It's about getting your hand on the wall first. It’s fun racing the best in the world. It gets the best out of me.”
Ledecky won a bronze, her 11th career medal. She has spoken about finishing her Olympic career in Los Angeles, but she’ll have to win longer races. She had no chance in the 400. “I'm pretty tough on myself, so there are always things I want to do better, even in my great races," Ledecky said. “So yeah, sure, there are a lot of things I would have liked to have done better, but I mean, I looked at my splits. There's nothing that was horrible about it. I just didn't have it on the last 200, 250 the way I wanted to. Been faster a few times this season, but you can’t complain.”
The sports community is accustomed to gold. “I know it was such a good field that there was a chance that I could have not have gotten the medal. So, I'm grateful for that. Grateful for the effort that I've put in. Happy with the medal and looking forward to my next races,” she said. “I need to keep my focus, not sit back and relax and kind of fall-out-of meet mode. I need to stay in the zone and the meet mode that I want to be in over the next week. So that's kind of what I mean, making sure that I'm just staying focused on my races and just staying positive, supporting my teammates. Just again, taking it day by day.”
This wasn’t the day to appreciate her Olympics distinction. It’s still with her. “She’s the stud, she’s the G.O.A.T.,” Phelps said.
Or, as Titmus said: “She kind of laid out a footprint for me. The way she was racing, I aspired to be like that. She was the first woman that really showed the world what you could do when you race fearlessly and take a race out hard. If I didn't have her to chase, there's no way I would be the athlete that I am because I was wanting to break barriers like she was.”
It’s hard to watch when The Terminator creates a water gap of more than three seconds. The footprint belongs to a monster.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.