• Ledecky triumphs in 1,500free after fifth-place finish in the 200 free.
Ledecky swims to her first victory in Tokyo, dominating inaugural women’s 1,500 freestyle
TOKYO >> It was as if a sense of normalcy had returned to an Olympic Games that had gone off the rails even before they opened.
There was the familiar sight of Team USA’s Katie Ledecky, the darling of Olympic Games past, pulling away from the rest of the world, adding body lengths to her margin with each lap, before finally capturing the inaugural Olympic 1,500-meter freestyle gold medal at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre on Wednesday morning.
Ledecky’s sixth career Olympic gold, her first of these Games, capped an otherwise surprising and difficult 24 hours for the American women in Tokyo.
Japan upset the U.S. 2-0 in the softball final. The reigning Women’s World Cup champion U.S. soccer team, already a 3-0 loser to
Sweden, was held to a 0-0 draw by Australia.
And then Simone Biles, the reigning Olympic all-around champion, stunned the Tokyo Games when she withdrew from the team competition Tuesday night, citing mental health concerns.
Ledecky also suffered a setback earlier Wednesday morning when she finished fifth in the 200-meter freestyle, one of four events she won five years earlier in Rio de Janeiro. That eliminated any chance Ledecky, 24, will surpass Jenny Thompson’s Olympic record for most gold medals by a female swimmer (5) in Tokyo.
While Ledecky will also be a heavy favorite to win a third consecutive Olympic 800 freestyle title to equal Thompson, she and her U.S. teammates will have to knock off Ariarne Titmus and Australia in the 4x200 relay, a task that Wednesday seemed unlikely.
Titmus, coming off her victory against Ledecky in the 400 freestyle earlier in the week, trailed Hong Kong’s Siobhan Bernadette Haughey in the 200 freestyle until the final 5 meters, touching the wall in an Olympic record 1 minute, 53.50 seconds.
“Bloody exhausted,” Titmus said. “That was a hell of a tough one. I knew Siobhan really wanted this. I could tell by the way that she swam yesterday morning (in the semifinals), so I knew it would be tough to beat her.
“It’s not the time (1:53.50) I thought I could do this morning, but it’s the Olympics and there’s a lot of other things going on. So, it was just about winning here. I’m very happy.”
Ledecky was never a factor, finishing in 1:55.30, and outside the medals for the first time in 24 Olympic or World Championships finals.
Seventy-three minutes later, Ledecky was back atop the starting block for the first women’s 1,500 final in Olympic history.
Female swimmers had lobbied the International Olympic Committee and FINA, swimming’s international governing body, for decades to add the metric mile to the Olympic program. Men have contested the event since the 1904 Games.
Ledecky quickly made up for lost time today. It took her less than 150 meters to put a body length on the field and the only real race was for the silver medal at that point. She finished in 15:37.34, well off her world record (15:20.48) set in 2018 and the Olympic record (15:35.35) in the heats.
Erica Sullivan of the U.S. was second in 15:41.41.
It was not all good news at the pool for Team USA. The American men finished fourth in the 4x200 relay, marking the first time the U.S. has failed to medal in an event it has won all but three times since 1936, including the previous four Olympics.