KAZAN, Russia — There’s no stopping Katie Ledecky. The speedy teenager virtually raced herself at the world swimming championships, and she was unbeatable.
The 18-year-old from Bethesda ended her meet in spectacular style Saturday night, lowering her own world record by 3.61 seconds in the 800-meter freestyle for her fifth gold medal.
She swam the 16-lap race in 8:07.39, bettering her time of 8:11.00 set last year on home soil.
“I knew that I was capable of going sub-8:10,” she said, “so to go 8:07 means a lot.”
Ledecky completed a sweep of the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 freestyles in Kazan. She swam the anchor leg on the victorious 4x200 freestyle relay, too.
“It’s really neat to say that you’ve done something nobody has done before,” Ledecky said. “I’ll enjoy this for a few days and then I’ll get back to work and hopefully there’s more to come.”
She improved her results from two years ago in Barcelona, where she won four golds and set two world records. In Kazan, she won the 400 by 3.89 seconds, the 800 by 10.26 seconds and the 1,500 by 14.66 seconds, taking down her old world record in the preliminaries and the final.
Her closest race was the 200 freestyle, when she rallied from fourth to win by 0.16 seconds.
“It could have been really tiring and it was,” Ledecky said. “But I recovered very well. I did what I needed to do to set myself up well each time that I got up on the blocks. I’m just proud of how I handled my races and how all this week has gone.”
Ledecky was under world-record pace throughout the 800, leaving the other swimmers trailing well behind her wake. She tore off one of her two swim caps and smashed the water with her hand in celebration of her third world record in Russia.
“I really love to see what she can do,” said Lauren Boyle, the silver medalist from New Zealand. “It shows what is possible for the human body. It’s very inspiring for me.”
Defending champion Missy Franklin faltered in the 200 backstroke, getting overtaken down the stretch by Emily Seebohm of Australia, who touched in 2:05.81 to complete a sweep of the backstroke events.
Franklin, the Olympic champion, settled for silver in 2:06.34. In seven events so far, Franklin has five medals, but no individual gold two years after she won a record six golds in Barcelona.
“This is probably one of the hardest races to get second, just because I love it so much,” Franklin said. “But I’m honestly really happy with that. I fought my heart out. I went out after it and I swam it like Missy Franklin swims a two backstroke. I’m just not there at the end yet, and that’s all right.”
Franklin returned later to anchor the U.S. team to victory in the mixed 4x100 free relay. Ryan Lochte, Nathan Adrian, Simone Manuel and Franklin won in 3:23.05, a world record. The Netherlands was second and Canada was third.
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