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| Katie Ledecky is all smiles after breezing through the 400 free in 3 minutes 59.99 seconds, nearly 6½ seconds faster than anyone else in her heat. The final is Saturday night |
Right around the spot where the orange pylon would typically mark the corner of the south end zone at the expansive Lucas Oil Stadium, Katie Ledecky touched the wall of a 50-meter swimming pool Saturday evening, waiting for her fellow competitors to complete the 400-meter freestyle final. In those moments, one could take in the remarkable transformations that define the U.S. Olympic swimming trials.
An NFL stadium transformed into the largest natatorium the world has ever seen.
A quadrennial swim meet, significantly amplified by the star power of Ledecky and her teammates, has grown so immense that an NFL stadium is required to host it.
And Ledecky’s own journey, evolving over 12 memorable years on these stages, from teenage sensation to legendary icon.
On the opening night of the nine-day trials, where Team USA will select its squad for the Paris Summer Games next month, Katie Ledecky powered through the eight lengths of the 400-meter freestyle in 3 minutes 58.35 seconds, winning by nearly four seconds and securing her spot on her fourth Olympic team. Paige Madden finished second with a time of 4:02.08, earning the second berth for Paris.
The night highlighted the strength of the women's side of Team USA, with Gretchen Walsh delivering the standout performance. In the semifinal of the 100-meter butterfly, Walsh went out fast and finished strong, breaking the world record—set eight years ago by Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom—with a time of 55.18 seconds. Her swim was accompanied by a roaring crescendo from the crowd, reminiscent of the excitement during a 99-yard touchdown run.
Walsh, a 21-year-old Nashville native and University of Virginia star, was overwhelmed with emotions afterward, holding back tears with one hand over her face and waving to the crowd with the other.
"I didn’t think I was going to set the record today," Walsh said. "And now here I am, the world record holder. It’s actually insane. I think I was the most shocked of anyone I know."
In the only other final Saturday night, local favorite Aaron Shackell won the men’s 400-meter freestyle in 3:45.46, becoming a first-time Olympian. Kieran Smith, Ledecky’s teammate at Gator Swim Club in Gainesville, Florida, finished second with a time of 3:45.76. After climbing out of the pool, Shackell spiked his swim cap and goggles and let out a feral scream.
Although record-keeping is imprecise, USA Swimming believes Saturday night’s attendance of 20,689 set a record for a swim meet, surpassing the roughly 16,000 who attended the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Part of the motivation for moving the trials to the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts stadium from a basketball arena in Omaha, where it had been held from 2008 to 2021, was to break that record. Consider it shattered.
It was a spectacle worth soaking in, even for elite athletes whose game faces usually don’t allow for such reflection. As Ledecky emerged from the tunnel onto the pool deck for her 400-meter freestyle final, to a deafening chorus of music, cheers, and squeals, she made a point to look around the stadium, delighting in an atmosphere unlike any she had experienced in her career. “It’s incredible. I think tonight blew it out of the water,” Ledecky said of the atmosphere inside the stadium. “It’s the kind of energy I’d never felt in a major meet. I was kind of blown away walking out there and seeing all those fans.”
Half a lifetime ago, on June 26, 2012, in Omaha, Ledecky dove into the pool at an Olympic trials for the first time, also for the preliminary heats of the 400-meter freestyle. At 15, she was the youngest swimmer in her heat by nearly a year and a half. The heat sheets, meet program, and television broadcast back then listed her first name as “Kathleen.” Those trials, like the ones in 2016 and 2021, took place in a converted basketball arena with a capacity of around 13,000. At the time, a rising sophomore at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Ledecky fell short of earning an Olympic berth in the 400 but won the 800-meter freestyle five days later, punching her ticket to the 2012 London Games. There, as the youngest swimmer in the final by four years, she stunned the sport by winning the gold medal, starting one of the most storied Olympic careers of this generation.
Ledecky’s longevity and sustained excellence have her on the verge of making history this summer. Two more gold medals in Paris, for example, would vault her past fellow American Jenny Thompson for the most Olympic golds by a female swimmer.
The 400-meter freestyle is Ledecky’s third-best event, behind the 1,500 and 800, and she is no longer considered the best in the world at that distance, a title held by defending Olympic champion and world record holder Ariarne Titmus. But on American soil, Ledecky’s dominance in the 400 is complete and unquestioned. She has now gone under four minutes in the 400 a total of 30 times in her career. Every other American female swimmer in history has done so a total of zero times.
With the U.S. trials among the latest on the worldwide calendar, American swimmers have the benefit—or added pressure—of seeing what times their international rivals posted earlier in their own trials.
For example, by the time Ledecky dove off the blocks for Saturday’s 400-meter freestyle, she already knew that Canada’s Summer McIntosh had swum a 3:59.06 and Australia’s Titmus a scorching 3:55.44, the second-fastest all-time, at their respective national trials.
"I keep track of everything going on around the world," Ledecky said. "I know what everyone’s doing, and I’m excited to race everyone." Ledecky, McIntosh, and Titmus have all held the 400-meter freestyle world record within the past 25 months, with Titmus taking it from Ledecky, McIntosh taking it from Titmus, and Titmus finally reclaiming it with a 3:55.38 last summer at the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan. In that race, Ledecky (3:58.73) finished a distant second, while McIntosh (3:59.94) faded to fourth. The head-to-head-to-head rematch in Paris this summer is already being hyped as the race of the century.
Although Titmus appears to have put some distance between herself and her rivals, counting Ledecky out would be a mistake. In 2016, at the pinnacle of her powers—the summer of her five-gold-medal, two-world-record performance in Rio—she swam a 3:58.98 in the 400-meter freestyle at trials. A month later in Brazil, she went 2.5 seconds faster, earning the gold medal and the world record.
Comparing the 2016 trials to the 2024 edition, she is faster this time. She believes she still has another monster 400 in her and has about six weeks left before the Paris Games to summon it.
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