Ledecky gets another gold
With 3 in hand, she has eyes on more
Associated Press
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Katie Ledecky breezed to her third gold medal of the world swimming championships, backing off a bit on her most grueling night of the meet.
It was left to Lilly King, Kylie Masse and Adam Peaty to take down the swimming record book — and King to claim another impressive win against her Russian rival.
Ledecky captured the 1,500-meter freestyle by more than half the length of the pool Tuesday and returned 49 minutes later to post the fastest time in the semifinals of the 200 free.
“It’s hard the other 364 days of the year,” Ledecky said, barely breathing hard. “It’s putting the work in for practice, so, when I get to this day of the meet, I can just do it. Just get up and know that I have the work in the bank to get up and swim those times.”
While Ledecky sucked all the suspense out of her final — she was more than 19 seconds ahead of the runner-up — King made it 2-0 over Yulia Efimova in their a compelling rivalry.
The finger-wagging American won gold at the Rio Olympics last summer after spurning Efimova and brazenly proclaiming the Russian star had no business being allowed to compete because of doping violations.
Efimova nearly broke Ruta Meilutyte’s 4-year-old record in the semifinals, giving her the prime lane in the middle of the pool. But King, racing right beside her, was the one who came through again when it counted. She got off to a blistering start and led all the way, touching in 1 minute, 4.13 seconds to shave 0.22 off the Lithuanian’s mark from the 2013 worlds in Barcelona.
“The rivalry is definitely there. I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon,” King said. “Obviously, it’s very awkward between the two of us. We don’t really like each other too much.”
Ledecky covered the metric mile in 15:31.82 — more than 6 seconds off her world-record pace from two years ago. She had to expend more effort in the 200 free, posting a time of 1:54.69 that put her ahead of Australia’s Emma McKeon, Italian worldrecord holder Federica Pellegrini and home-country favorite Katinka Hosszu heading into Wednesday’s final.
Britain’s Peaty broke a pair of 50-meter breaststroke marks — one in the preliminaries, another in the semifinals. His 26.10 shaved 0.32 seconds off the standard he set at the 2015 worlds. He went faster a few hours later in the non-Olympic event, touching in 25.95.
Masse took down another record from the rubber-suit era. She won the women’s 100 backstroke in 51.10 — 0.02 better than the mark set by Britain’s Gemma Spofforth’s at the 2009 worlds, the last hurrah for performanceenhancing attire.