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Leah Smith Had A Fast 400 freestyle, Too

Braden Keith
by Braden Keith 4

January 16th, 2016 ACC, College, News

2016 ARENA PRO SWIM SERIES AT AUSTIN

With much of the attention (and rightly so) focused on Katie Ledecky’s performance last night, Leah Smith got overlooked. However, the University of Virginia swimmer put up an impressive 400 freestyle this morning. The 20-year old was 4:04.74 to take second.

That swim immediately propelled her to third in the world, behind only Ledecky and New Zealand’s Lauren Boyle. Smith has also pushed herself to the front of the list for the potential second Olympic spot in the 400 free.

2015-2016 LCM Women 400 Free

KatieUSA
LEDECKY
08/07
3.56.46*WR*OR
2Leah
SMITH
USA4.00.6506/27
3Jazmin
CARLIN
GBR4.01.2308/07
4Boglarka
KAPAS
HUN4.02.3708/07
5Coralie
BALMY
FRA4.03.4008/07
View Top 26»

The time was presumably swum unrested, as Smith is in the middle of her collegiate season and doesn’t have any other large scale competitions coming up.

The time was just short of Smith’s personal best of 4:04.66, which was done at last year’s World University Games during the preliminary rounds en route to an eventual gold medal.

Smith will be in action once again this morning, swimming the 200 free. If her performance is as good as her 400, it could have a huge potential ripple effect with Omaha just six months away. A surging Smith could really bolster the United States 4×200 squad as they go for gold in Rio.

Smith is also scheduled to swim the 800 freestyle later in the meet.

 

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UVA Swim Fan
8 years ago

Go Leah, Go HOOS!

GI
8 years ago

Smith should maintains around 4:04 at middle of the season, and try to approaches 4:01 at Rio to medal.
She has a good shot for individual spot in 400 free at Trails.

Swimmer A
8 years ago

Saw that too… If this were some alternate reality where Ledecky never swam, she was a famous chief prodigy, then this would be swim of the meet material for Leah Smith. 4:04.74 would have gotten her 6th at worlds last year. This is big stuff in season.

John
Reply to  Swimmer A
8 years ago

Why so amazing? 4:04 wouldn’t have been the world’s fastest 27 years ago.

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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