Twelve years to the day that Katie Ledecky won her first Olympic gold in London in 2012, she earned her ninth.
“I’m kind of relieved that I got my hand to the wall first,” Ledecky said of her victory in the 800-m freestyle Saturday at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games. “I knew Aug. 3 was the day that I won in 2012. And I didn’t want Aug 3 to be a day that I didn’t like moving forward. So I kind of felt like I put a lot of pressure on myself, but I’m just really happy that I could get the job done. I definitely wouldn’t have pictured this in 2012.”
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Ledecky now has 14 Olympic medals, eight of them gold, beating her own record for the most medals won by an American woman in Olympic history. While Ledecky keeps hitting new milestones when it comes to superlatives, she doesn’t focus on the records or the historic narrative of her career. “I really just don’t think about these things very much,” she said Satuday. “I really take it one race at a time. But I know that there are only a handful of people that have won that many golds, or that number of medals. It’s an honor to be up there with so many great athletes from over the years, and I never pictured myself being in this position.”
For Ledecky, it’s a fitting way to close out the season and these Olympic Games; earlier in the year, Canada’s Summer McIntosh, who didn’t swim the 800 m in Paris but earned three golds and a silver at these Games, bested Ledecky in the 800-m freestyle at a small meet in Ledecky’s training state of Florida. “Racing Summer definitely prepared me for moments like this moment,” Ledecky said of the motivation that being beaten to the wall for the first time since 2010 in that race provided. “I think she prepared me for tonight. I definitely had some of my best distance sets right after that; it really sparked something in me.”
In Saturday’s 800 m, Australia’s Ariarne Titmus repeated as Olympic silver medalist and Ledecky’s teammate Paige Madden dropped more than five seconds from her previous personal best time, set during the heats in Paris to qualify for the final, and touched third for bronze.
Commenting on the momentousness of the date and Ledecky’s win, Titmus said she was in “grade six primary school—that’s how remarkable she is” when Ledecky, now competing in her fourth Olympics, won her first Olympic medal. “I hope I’ve made her a better athlete, because she certainly made me a become the athlete that I am and I felt so privileged to race alongside her,” Titmus said.
Ledecky, who enjoys training and being with her training mates in Florida, which include Bobby Finke, Caeleb Dressel, and Kieran Smith, said she is likely to take a break after Paris, and has “absolutely no idea what my fall will look like in terms of how long a break I will take and if I go to any meets. But if I go back to training on Sept. 1, and train all fall, I will be one happy camper.”
Team USA collected additional medals in the pool, with Kate Douglass finishing for silver in the 200-m individual medley. Teammate Alex Walsh finished third, but was disqualified for an improper turn while transitioning from backstroke to breaststroke.
In the final race of the night, the U.S. mixed medley team won gold with a world record time of 3:37.43, putting to rest chatter earlier in the week about the shallowness of the pool that some felt was slowing down times. It’s just the second time the race has been part of Olympic swimming, and teams can chose any two women and any two men to swim the four strokes, in any order.
The U.S. opted to lead off with Ryan Murphy in the backstroke, and he set the pace for the remainder of the race, followed by Nic Finke, silver medalist in Paris with the breaststroke, Gretchen Walsh, who also earned silver at these Games, with the butterfly portion that pulled Team USA into world record pace, and Tori Huske’s freestyle. It was sweet redemption for the U.S., which finished fifth at the last Olympics in the race’s debut. China finished in second for silver and Australia, the Olympic champions in Tokyo, settled for bronze. The relay gold and Ledekcy’s win put the U.S. one behind the Australians in the gold medal tally in the pool, although the U.S. tops the Australians in total medals 25 to 16.
Team USA has more opportunities to add to their gold medal count with one more day of racing on Sunday.