Katie Ledecky dominates at 2022 World Swimming Championships
This week, former Stanford standout Katie Ledecky had a dominant performance at the 2022 World Swimming Championships in Budapest, Hungary picking up gold medals in all four events she entered: 400-meter freestyle, 1500-meter freestyle, 4x200 freestyle relay, and 800-meter freestyle.
In the 800-meter freestyle, which she competed in on Friday, Ledecky crushed the competition, winning by more than 10 seconds while also being less than four seconds off her world record that she set at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Ledecky has won the 800-meter freestyle five times in a row at the world championships and eight times in a row overall if you include the Olympics. No other swimmer has won a specific event five times at the world championships and only Michael Phelps has also won eight golds in one event at the world championships and Olympics combined (200-meter butterfly).
Ledecky now has a record 22 medals at the world championships to go along with a record 19 gold medals (14 individual). At the Olympics, she has won seven gold medals (six individual) and 10 medals overall, the other three being silver. If she competes at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, she’ll have a chance to surpass another former Stanford standout, Jenny Thompson, for most overall medals and gold medals of any female swimmer in Olympic history. Thompson has 12 Olympic medals overall: eight gold, three silver, and one bronze.
Ledecky isn’t the only Stanford Cardinal to compete at this year’s world championships. On the women’s side, incoming freshman Claire Curzan, freshman Torri Huske, redshirt junior Taylor Ruck, and freshman Regan Smith are also competing. On the men’s side, senior Jon Cook and freshman Ron Polonsky are competing as well. Ruck is representing Canada, Cook is representing the Philippines, and Polonsky is representing Israel. The rest are representing the United States.
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