Katie Ledecky rides world record wave into Toyota U.S. Swimming Championships
Just how good was Katie Ledecky's most recent swim meet?
'I would kind of put Rio (the 2016 Olympics) and Fort Lauderdale (the Tyr Pro Series meet four weeks ago) maybe as 1A and 1B now,' she said. 'I don't want to compare the two of them, because they're two different meets. They're two different slates of events.'
From April 30-May 3, Ledecky swam the second-fastest time in history in the 1500m freestyle, her second-fastest time ever in the 400m free and, to cap it off, her first world record in the 800m free, her trademark event, since those Rio Games.
'It was certainly the best meet I probably had in a long while,' she said Tuesday.
Ledecky has spent nearly 13 years at the top of her sport — from her first Olympic gold at age 15 in 2012 to winning five titles each at the World Championships in 2015 and 2017 to breaking the record for most Olympic golds for a U.S. woman in any sport last summer.
Yet Ledecky placed the 2025 Tyr Pro Swim Series at Fort Lauderdale in the same sentence as the meet she is arguably most known for: the 2016 Rio Olympics. In Brazil, Ledecky became the second swimmer to sweep golds in three individual freestyle events at one Games after Debbie Meyer, who won the same 200m, 400m and 800m events in 1968.
Next for Ledecky: the Toyota U.S. Championships from June 3-7 in Indianapolis (live nightly at 7 ET on Peacock).
She plans to swim her usual slate — the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m frees, with the 200m included to earn a place on the 4x200m free relay at the World Championships in July and August in Singapore.
Over the next two months, Ledecky can add to her 30 career national titles (including Olympic Trials) and her 21 World Championships titles (five shy of Michael Phelps' record).
But she is sticking to her mindset from a month ago — 'It's almost like, if the season was over now, I'd be happy,' she said during the Fort Lauderdale meet, one day before the 800m free world record.
'I'm keeping the pressure off,' she said Tuesday. 'I was kind of just reminding myself over and over ... I need to continue to just stay level-headed with my approach going to these meets and recognize that there's still going to be ups and downs. That's sport.'
Ledecky's Fort Lauderdale feats were a product of her offseason training. She changed coaches after the Olympics in 2012 (Yuri Suguiyama left her D.C. area club for Cal), 2016 (she matriculated at Stanford) and 2021 (she moved to the University of Florida).
After the 2024 Games, she stayed put with Anthony Nesty's group of professional Gators, including fellow Olympic distance champion Bobby Finke.
'That allowed me to have a nice kind of mental break right after Paris,' she said. 'I didn't have the stress of the change.'
Ledecky took a month of vacation in the early fall, visiting her native Maryland, Salt Lake City, Palo Alto and San Diego and lifting in hotel gyms. 'It was kind of a fun activity on the plane rides, googling lap-swimming hours at various schools,' to find pools for training, she said.
She resumed her routine in Gainesville in late October and 'quickly got back in shape.' The next months were a contrast from late 2023 and early 2024, when a non-serious but lingering upper respiratory illness interrupted training.
But not enough to affect her performance in Paris several months later, when she won another four Olympic medals, including two golds, bringing her totals to nine and 14.
'Reflecting on what's been going well this year,' she said of her recent training, 'that's just one piece of it that I felt was substantial in Fort Lauderdale.'
Yet Ledecky had no lofty goals for that Tyr Pro Series meet, which many used as a tune-up for the U.S. Championships.
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA - MAY 01: Katie Ledecky reacts after winning the 400m freestyle in 3 minutes, 56.81 seconds at a Tyr Pro Series meet in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It's her second-best time ever behind her 2016 Olympic swim of 3:56.46, which stood as the world record until 2022, on May 01, 2025 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (Photo by)
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'There was no special preparation for it,' she said when asked how tapered she was.
Ledecky still wasn't expecting a colossal week when she touched the wall after her first race, winning the 1500m free by nearly 40 seconds. She thought she swam well enough that her time would be between 15:29 and 15:35 — faster than any other woman in history, but outside her five fastest times ever.
Then she caught sight of the scoreboard at the outdoor pool next to the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
It read 15:24.51, the second-best time ever behind her world record of 15:20.48 from 2018. Ledecky owns the 22 fastest times in history in the event, which she hasn't lost in 15 years.
In the next day's 400m free, she was nearly a body length behind Canadian Summer McIntosh with 100 meters to go. Then Ledecky zoomed past the 18-year-old, triple gold medalist from Paris, outsplitting her by 2.32 seconds over the last lap.
Those two races, plus the months of work before it in Gainesville, gave Ledecky confidence when she typed out the now-famous note in her phone going into the 800m free, her final race of the meet.
'Something I do often, actually,' she said of what she called 'a doodle.' 'Sometimes, when I'm just sitting in my hotel room before a race, it's almost like visualizing, I would say. I just kind of think through what splits I think I could hold, or how I want to swim the race. It kind of helps me visualize it to write out splits.'
In her first visualization, Ledecky saw herself swimming around 8:05.5. A spectacular time to be sure, but she also knew it was just shy of her 8:04.79 world record from the Rio Olympics.
So she decided to shave a tenth of a second off here or there among her estimated 50-meter split times. The Stanford psychology graduate did the math. It spit out 8:04.6. A few hours later, she swam 8:04.12 to break her first long-course world record in any event in seven years.
Ledecky didn't think back to the prophetic note until the next day. She took a screenshot, added the word 'Believe' and shared it on Instagram.
Katie Ledecky
'I had a lot of belief in myself going into that (race),' she said. 'I wasn't going to be disappointed if I didn't go that time. I mean, I'm realistic. I wasn't setting expectations on myself, even as the week was progressing. But I kind of knew I had something good in me for that last race.'
By excelling past her 25th birthday, Ledecky had already reached the longevity that none of her distance-swimming predecessors did. Now 28, she quelled her own doubts about challenging her best times from her teens.
'I don't know if I ever thought I was going to be 3:56 again,' she said moments after her 3:56.81 in the 400m free in Fort Lauderdale. Her 3:56.46 at the Rio Olympics was the world record until 2022.
She is now up to 15 career individual world records in long-course pools, tying the U.S. female record. The first 13 of them came from 2013-16.
'When I was kind of on that world record tear for those few years, it just felt like every race, I kind of went into it with the idea that I could break a record,' she said. 'I don't think I completely lost that mindset, but it's been seven years since I've broken one. It's been nine years since the 800m one. I came to an OK place with the fact that those are just really hard records that I set for myself, and it's not like I'm going to break them every single meet now. I just kind of stopped putting that pressure on myself, or stopped putting that expectation on myself. I just kind of swim a little more free and just try to improve in different areas, improve off of the previous year or the previous two years or whatever it is rather than always comparing myself to my 19-year-old self or whatever it may be.'
Nick Zaccardi,
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