FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Winning may get old. For someone like Katie Ledecky, the most decorated American woman in Olympic history across any sport, it almost certainly does. But that hasn’t prevented her never-ending pursuit of getting better—which, in her case, has often meant chasing her former self. 

That’s no easy task when you’ve largely been in a league of your own for more than a decade. Ledecky holds most of the top times ever in the distance freestyle events, but hasn’t exactly threatened her personal bests in years.

That is, until this week.

Dialing back the clock nearly a decade, Ledecky harkened back to the days of her presumed peak at the Tyr Pro Swim Series in Fort Lauderdale. The culmination of one of her most complete meets in recent memory came Saturday night when she set a world record in the 800-meter freestyle with a time of 8:04.12, eclipsing her own record that she set nearly nine years ago at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.  

Ledecky wore her emotion on her face after she finished, emphatically slapping the water with both hands before giving a fist pump for the South Florida crowd, which lived and died with each split that flashed on the timing board during the race. 

This had been a long time coming.

The swim was something of a full circle moment for Ledecky, who first burst onto the scene at the London Games, four years before the 2016 world record. There, at age 15, she won gold in the 800 and kickstarted one of the most accomplished swimming careers in history.

Now 28, Ledecky has experienced the highs and lows of a life in the pool, admittedly with a lot more of the former than the latter.

Suffice it to say, Saturday—and really, the entire meet at the historic Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center—was a special kind of peak.

“I can’t stop smiling,” she told Sports Illustrated after her fourth event in four days. “It's kind of been like that all week though, so it's not really new.”

The trip back in time began Wednesday when Ledecky dove in for the 1,500-meter freestyle, her most dominant event. The gap to the rest of the field (nearly 40 seconds in this instance) is an understood reality at this point, but her time of 15:24.51 turned heads. It marked the second-fastest time in history, and more than 12 seconds faster than what she logged at a Sectional meet in February. 

Then came the 400 free, the event where Ledecky was usurped at the last two Olympic Games by Australia’s Ariarne Titmus and Canada’s Summer McIntosh. Titmus opted to sit out in the buildup to the 2025 world championships, but McIntosh was alongside Ledecky at the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center and showed the typical speed of a reigning silver medalist, leading at the 300-meter mark by nearly a body length. 

But on came Ledecky—the hunter, not the hunted. By the time she turned at the penultimate wall, she’d already drawn even. She then closed with a breathtaking final 50 to finish in 3:56.81, less than a half-second off her personal best of 3:56.46. She flashed a big smile at the timing board.

“I don’t know if I ever thought I was going to be [swimming] 3:56 again,” Ledecky told Peacock after climbing out of the pool following the second-fastest swim of her career in the event.

After a second-place finish to Paris Olympics 4x200-meter relay teammate Claire Weinstein in the 200 freestyle Friday, Ledecky finished the crowded four-day slate with the 800, the event that thrust her into the spotlight at the London Olympics. 

Nearly 13 years later, Ledecky swam like she was 15 again. In fact, she swam faster.

 “I've always approached each race with the mindset that something like that could happen,” she says. “And even as that didn't happen for many, many years, I still maintain that approach.

“I'm just trying to take it day by day and enjoy it. It pays off. And when I'm on, I'm on and I know it.”

“She’s one of the biggest leaders I know,” three-time Olympic gold medalist Bobby Finke, who trains with Ledecky at Florida under coach Anthony Nesty, says. “I looked up to her when she won her 2012 gold medal. Having that kind of person around you only makes you want to be better.”

The time will come for career retrospectives and legacy accounting, but all of that seems presumptuous after Saturday night. If Ledecky can set new benchmarks nearly a decade after winning four golds in Rio, then there’s no telling what’s to come in the years leading up to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

“I’ve never looked too far ahead,” Ledecky says. “I just take it year by year and try to improve each year. And certain years I've been able to do that in certain events. This is probably the biggest start-to-finish meet I've had where every event has been on in the way that I would want it to be. I surprised myself this week.” 

With 14 medals across four Olympic games, surprises are few and far between in swimming. If Ledecky is in a race against time, she’s winning. Comfortably.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Katie Ledecky Turns Back Clock With World Record Nearly a Decade in the Making.

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