There was an emphatic slap of the water, the splash shooting right up into her be-goggled face. There was a victory roar unlike anything she had unleashed all week. There was a giant, unabashed smile as she made her way out of the Kazan Arena pool.
And minutes later, on the medal stand, there was a beaming, full-throated sing-along to the “Star-Spangled Banner,” as it played for the fifth time here in her honor.
This time felt different for Katie Ledecky. The sense of accomplishment was complete. Saturday night, in her final race of the FINA World Swimming Championships, she made plenty more history .
A world record in the women’s 800-meter freestyle, with a once-infathomable time of 8 minutes 7.39 seconds and wrapped up one of the great single-meet performances in swimming history. When it was over, for the first time all week, she exhaled.
“I had just finished my meet and… I knew it was a real special night for our team, so I was just going to enjoy it,” said Ledecky, an 18-year-old Bethesda native. “It was my last time up on the medal stand, and to see everybody in the crowd it’s really a neat thing.”
Across seven remarkable days here, she set three world records, won five gold medals, expanded her repertoire of world-class events, and invented a new achievement the Ledecky Slam, an unprecedented sweep of the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 freestyles .
That may never be duplicated, unless by Ledecky herself at the next world championships two years from now. She would probably do it at the 2016 Rio De Janeiro olympics as well, but the 1500 is not contested in the Olympics.
For every swimmer chasing world-class dreams, there is a perfect race somewhere out there, and you never quite achieve it, because there is always something that can be improved, a hundredth of a second that can be shaved.
But for Ledecky, whose sheer ability means she can take aim at things no one else in the world would even fathom, this race came perhaps as close as any in her career to perfect.
More Stories:
http://usnews.in/katie-ledecky-breaks-own-world-record-in-winning-1500-gold/
http://usnews.in/indian-off-spinner-bowler-ravichandran-ashwin-receives-arjuna-award/
http://usnews.in/ronda-rousey-would-win-the-womens-boxing-world-title/
ref:reachforthewall
