Katie Ledecky was all alone, in a pool here at the 2024 Olympics, crawling ahead of helpless competitors.
Katie Ledecky is all alone, still, atop her field, as she has been for more than a decade.
She did not need another gold medal to cement her place in the pantheon of Olympic greats. But here, on an unforgettable Wednesday night at Paris La Défense Arena, she won medal No. 12, gold No. 8.
She sailed to victory in the 1500-meter freestyle, finishing in an Olympic record time of 15:30.02, 10.33 seconds ahead of the silver medalist, France’s Anastasiia Kirpichnikova (15:40.35). Germany’s Isabel Gose took bronze (15:41.16).
But before they could even finish, Ledecky slapped the water. Famously even-keeled, she unleashed an atypical scream.
She screamed because, over the past few days, she had doubted herself. She doubted in the aftermath of Saturday’s 400-meter freestyle, when an atypical 4:00.86 yielded an atypical medal: bronze. She doubted whether she had a 15:30 in her, because her first three swims here at the Paris Games “felt faster than the time,” she said.
On Wednesday, in the face of that doubt, which has nagged her throughout the past year, she “finally put together a swim that matched how I felt, [that] was in line with what I thought I was capable of.”
