By: Emily Hur
Last Saturday in Budapest’s Duna Arena, Katie Ledecky claimed yet another gold when she finished in 3:58.15 at the FINA World Championships.
Ledecky managed to maintain her first place throughout the race and finished 1.24 seconds in front of second place. Unfortunately, world record holder Ariarne Titmus missed the action. The Australian Olympian beat Ledecky’s previous world record in the 400m free event last month with an astonishing 3:56.40. However, she boldly decided to skip the World Championships because she believed she had nothing to prove there.
“I just really wanted to think about the long term,” Titmus explains. “And I really don’t care — it doesn’t bother me that I’m not going to be in the headlines or the media or the spotlight when the world championships are on. That’s not why I swim. I swim because I love it and I want to perform on the biggest stage, which for me is the Olympic Games.”
The Olympics was where Ledecky and Titmus first met. The United States has won an overwhelming number of swimming golds in the past few Olympics, but last year in Tokyo, Australia stepped up to stop them. The U.S. won 8 golds to Australia’s 7 compared to 2016’s score of 16-3. The noticeable difference between the two scores created a rivalry between the two teams and their swimmers.
Though fans were hoping for a rematch between Ledecky and Titmus, Ledecky’s win remains a huge victory. Not only did she earn her 16th world championship gold medal, but she also swam the 4th fastest 400m event in her career, beating her meet record from 2017. Ledecky started the season with no goal in mind other than to improve, and on Saturday she ended up a whole second faster than her old 2021-22 season personal best.
“I wanted to push to the point of pain tonight,” Ledecky said after completing her 400m free event. “It’s the fastest I’ve ever been at worlds, so I’m really happy with that and really excited about the rest of the [meet]. I’m just always trying to improve … We kind of set out this year [without] setting any time goals, just trying to improve each meet, and so far I’ve done that, so that’s pretty good.”
Overall, Team USA finished the first day of the world championship meet with 6 out of the 15 possible medals. American swimmer Leah Smith took third place in Ledecky’s event with a time of 4:02.08 and collected her 7th world championship medal. In the men’s events, Caleb Dressel led his team to victory in the 4×100 free relay. After him came Ryan Held who surprisingly accomplished a 46.99 split in the second leg which sealed their win.