It’s never a good idea to overlook Katie Ledecky, one of the world’s fiercest competitors in the water.
Stanford’s Ledecky had her most impressive performance at the Tokyo Games on Wednesday night in a dramatic anchor leg in the 4X200-meter freestyle to lead the Americans to a silver medal.
The U.S. quartet went under the world record but still was 0.40 of a second behind gold medalist China, which scored a surprising victory in 7 minutes 40.33 seconds. Pre-race favorite Australia was third in 7:41.29 as 200 free winner Ariarne Titmus didn’t give her team a big enough lead in the opening leg.
Ledecky, swimming an ambitious five-race program in Tokyo, started the final leg in third place behind Australia. But almost as soon as Cal’s Katie McLaughlin hit the wall with a strong swim, Ledecky came out charging. Ledecky never let up in chasing down the favorites while closing on the Chinese a day after finishing fifth in the 200 free.
“I wasn’t as nervous maybe and just knew I was gonna let it go and go for it each lap of that race,” she told reporters.
Although coaches have told Ledecky to hold something back in the two-lap leg, the swim star felt she had enough experience to swim in the way she wanted.
“Even when I try to hold back that first 100, it’s still really fast and I can still come home so I just kind of let it go and just race,” she said.
Ledecky won the 1,500 freestyle on Tuesday and got a silver medal in the 400 free on Sunday. She now has nine career medals in three Olympics with the 800 freestyle still to come.
The U.S. relay team culminated a big day for American swimming.
Incoming Stanford freshman Regan Smith and Hali Flickinger broke the longest U.S. medal drought in any swimming event by taking the silver and bronze medals in the women’s 200-meters butterfly.
The last medalist in the race was Stanford’s Misty Hyman in 2000 who won the gold in one of the biggest upsets in Olympic swimming history. The Americans hadn’t won two medals in the fly since 1972.
Smith finished in 2:05.30, 1.44 behind China’s Zhang Yufei, who set an Olympic record. Flickinger hit the wall in 2:05.65.
Caeleb Dressel set an Olympic record with a time of 47.08 seconds to edge Australia’s Kyle Chamlers by 0.06 seconds for the gold medal in the 100 freestyle. Kliment Kolesnikov of Russian was third in 47.44.
The United States won its 15th gold medal in the sprint, the first since Cal’s Nathan Adrian in the London Games in 2012. Adrian also finished third at the Rio Games in 2016.
“I thought I executed my race plan perfectly,” Dressel said. “I couldn’t change anything.”
The Americans also won a gold medal in the first-ever 800 freestyle behind Bobby Finke’s final leg push. Finke’s final 50 meters propelled him past Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri by 0.24 seconds with a time of 7:41.87.
“I noticed like 10 meters off I was catching a little bit of ground, and that’s the only motivation I needed to try and pass and get my hand on the wall,” Finke told reporters.
The victory was the first in a distance race for a U.S. male swimmer since the Los Angeles Games in 1984.
