2020 PRO SWIM SERIES – DES MOINES
- March 4-7, 2020
- Des Moines, Iowa
- LCM (50m)
- Meet Info
- Psych Sheets
- Live Results
American swimmer Katie Ledecky swam the 4th-fastest 200 meter free time of her career on Friday evening at the Pro Swim Series in Des Moines, Iowa.
Ledecky swam a 1:54.59, which is about 8-tenths of a second behind her lifetime best of 1:53.73. Most of Ledecky’s best times in the 200 free have been swum at non-taper meets.
Ledecky’s Lifetime Bests
| Time | Meet | Date |
| 1:53.73 | 2016 Olympic Games | 8/9/2016 |
| 1:54.43 | 2016 Pro Swim Series – Austin | 1/16/2016 |
| 1:54.56 | 2018 Pro Swim Series – Santa Clara | 6/8/2018 |
| 1:54.59 | 2020 Pro Swim Series – Des Moines | 3/6/2020 |
| 1:54.60 | 2018 Summer Nationals | 7/26/2018 |
A 1:54.59 would have taken a silver medal at last summer’s World Championships behind Federica Pellegrini.
Ledecky swam a 3:59.66 in the 400 free on Thursday and a 15:29.51 in the 1500 free, the latter of which is the 5th-fastest 1500 in history.
Ledecky has a bigger choice than normal to make this summer when it comes to the Olympic Games thanks to the addition of the women’s 1500 free to the Olympic schedule for the first time in 2020.
A potential schedule for Ledecky would include the 400 free final on the morning of day 2, the 200 free final on the morning of day 3, the 800 free final on the morning of day 6, and the 1500 final on the morning of day 9, individually. That’s in addition to the women’s 800 free relay final in the the morning of day 5. So, she could avoid any finals doubles, unless she races the women’s 400 free relay again as she did in Rio (though the American sprint group is getting deeper-and-deeper, making a qualification for that final group of 4 a taller-and-taller task).
There were very unusual splits of Ledecky in this race. Of all her races under 1:56 she never had third fifty under 29sec and her second half of this event never was that fast. And this “shape of splits curve – never seen that from her. I don’t think that it is her new approach to this race. So that let me think that she is indeed in training phase now and there wasn’t special preparation for this particular meet for some reason. A checkpoint, for instance. She actually can allow it for herself in early March having 5 months prior Olympics. She is probably the only US swimmer who shouldn’t worry about Trials.
In the article about today’s PSS finals an interesting statistics was presented that can be used as a metric in discussion about the best 200 free swimmer. Out of 20 best performances Ledecky has 6. Pellegrini has also 6 but 3 of them are from 2009. 4 is for Sjostrom.
Katie was 11 times under 1:55, Sjostrom – 7 times, Pellegrini – 8 ( 5 suits in 2009)
Compare to Sjostrom and Pellegrini she was the only one who broke 1:54 barrier in textile suit.
etc, etc, etc
The only thing that she didn’t accomplished yet is the textile word record by being 0.12 sec behind Allison Schmitt.
The discussion that involves Pellegrini’s record doesn’t… Read more »
I don’t know the source of your information but how could she set a world record in 800, a personal best in 100 and a personal best in 200 not being tapered at Janury 2016 meet?
3 out of 5 best times came from PSS, that’s why Swimswam called it non-taper
Beside Ledecky is being known as she could set WR in non-taper meet, 2 WRs in a local small meet back in 2014, 1500 WR in PSS two years ago
Don’t be that naive now as 16 years old high school sophomore then. I think that adults in her family who are familiar with sport business explained her that World Records have special business value and shouldn’t be set at high school meet. The lesson was learned and she did it then only on special occasions with one only exception – prelim race in 1500 in Kasan WC.
In May 2018 Ledecky turned professional and was on the Market in search of best sponsor. That PSS meet had a special purposes to raise the price of the offer.
Also my point was that her best two results were done when she was tapered. Was it PSS or Olympic… Read more »
I don’t think he’s the naive one