Words have begun to pale in their ability to describe the level of dominance by which Katie Ledecky has undone competitive distance freestyle swimming. But, she continues to tick the records faster and faster, sometimes by margins, sometimes by mountains.
Her latest conquest is of the 1650 yard freestyle swum at the Ohio State Invitational on Sunday. There, Ledecky ran up a 15:03.92 – which broke her own American and U.S. Open Records in the event by almost 10 seconds; and the NCAA Record by a phenomenal 22 seconds. Her old fastest-ever was a 15:13.30, while the old fastest by a collegiate swimmer was Virginia’s Leah Smith, who swam 15:25.30 as a junior last year.
In the process, Ledecky also re-broke her own NCAA Record from earlier this year in the 1000 free. In a dual meet earlier this month against the Texas Longhorns, Ledecky swam a 9:10.49 in a finished-1000 free. On Sunday, the first 1000 yards of her 1650 free was 9:08.94, which counts as the new collegiate record. Her own personal best of 8:59 still stands as the U.S. Open and American Records.
Stanford as an NCAA team is technically done for the semester, and while two members of the squad (Katie Drabot, Ella Eastin) will travel to the World Short Course Championships with the U.S. National Team, Stanford has confirmed that neither Ledecky nor anyone else on the women’s team will swim at Winter Nationals. Otherwise, the Cardinal resume their racing on January 20th with back-to-back duals against Arizona State and Arizona. That’s the start of a very in-conference spring, where their whole schedule will consist of 5 Pac-12 dual meets, the Pac-12 championships, and the NCAA Championships in Indianapolis in March.
Video below, courtesy Oscar Thomas:
There is something different about her arms recovery.
Someone needs to tell KL to stop circle swimming. Great swim though!
Wilimovsky is leading the men’s times with a 14:48 and Ledecky went a 15:03.
She seems to swim fine by herself, but if competition helps, maybe she should swim against a couple of the men.
What I find most impressive about Ledecky isn’t the fact she is so much better than anyone else, it’s that she finds the motivation to attack and give her all in every swim. If I had her talent I wouldn’t have the mental strength to handle being out there on my own, but she does it every swim.
Wow, if she is well rest (and get whatever room she has for improvement), she could faster – her stoke count go from 14 to 15 and then 16 in the last couple hundreds, while holding split in mid-27s.
WOW!
Those turns OMG!! And 5 kicks off the last wall!!
Katie Ledecky must be the bionic woman.This is starting to get out of reach. The NCAA should look into allowing her to compete with the men. She might be close to 14:45 in the short course yards mile in March 2017.
She really shows a lot of fatigue, switching from 14 to 15 strokes per 25y in the closing laps.
Yes, and that 25.9 closing 50… ugh. You can tell the poor girl must have been so tired.