By: Alicia Chen

Katie Ledecky won first place in the 400-meter freestyle. Her challenger, Summer McIntosh, came in second place by about one second, earning herself a silver medal. But Katie Ledecky did not become such an outstanding swimmer, with sixteen gold medals — five more than any female swimmer in history – by focusing on her rivals all the time.

What mattered to her the most was beating her own meet record, this time at 3 minutes 58.15 seconds, even though she did not beat the world record set by Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus last month at 3 minutes 56.50 seconds. And most importantly, she had no specific time goals. Ledecky’s only goal was to become better than her old self.

Fifteen-year-old Summer McIntosh was a great runner-up, pushing Ledecky all through the race and finishing off with a time of 3 minutes 59.39 seconds. Ledecky stated, “I was a little nervous. McIntosh hung in there the whole time, so she definitely pushed me a lot.”

In third place with the bronze medal was American Veteran Leah Smith, with a time of 4 minutes 2.08 seconds, the seventh Olympic championship of her career. Overall, Team USA won 6 of the 15 possible medals on the opening day of the world championship meet.

There is also a possibility that Ledecky had been motivated by attempting to regain her world record from Titmus, but she denied any conception that she was motivated by this. She stated, “That wasn’t any added motivation. A lot of people are like, ‘oh, that must motivate you more.’ But I’m always motivated….”

In this 400-meter freestyle, all these swimmers did an outstanding job, with McIntosh shocking the audience the most at only 15 years old, and already on Ledecky’s tail. Ledecky also did well, beating her previous time record and coming in first, motivated as ever.