Katie Ledecky opens the World Swimming Championships on Sunday with the most anticipated race of her career.
The 400-meter freestyle final in Fukuoka, Japan, will feature Ledecky, a seven-time Olympic gold medalist and 19-time world champion; Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, who beat Ledecky in this event at the 2019 Worlds and the Tokyo Games; and Canada’s 16-year-old Summer McIntosh, who took Titmus’ world record on March 28.
It would be the first time that the last three world record holders in an Olympic program event meet in a championship grand final since the 2012 Olympic men’s 100m breaststroke (Brendan Hansen, Kosuke Kitajima, Brenton Rickard).
But Sunday’s race recalls an even bigger moment: the 2004 Olympic men’s 200m freestyle.
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This was dubbed the “Race of the Century” for featuring, at the time, the four fastest men in history, all of whom were individual Olympic gold medalists: Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett of Australia, Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands and a 19. -year-old American named Michael Phelps.
Phelps, then an underdog, was so excited about the chance to compete with them, especially Thorpe, that he bristled at his coach’s suggestion that he drop the 200m freestyle from his busy Olympic schedule. (Phelps eventually won a satisfying bronze, breaking his American record by 1.28 seconds.)
Ledecky, who is one individual world title ahead of Phelps’ record 15, outwardly remains calm about his own shared historic moment.
“It looks pretty similar,” she said. “I’m always excited to start the meet.”
McIntosh, who she had Ledecky quotes on her childhood bedroom wallshared the sentiment.
“I’m really excited to see what happens, and all I can really control is what I do for myself between now and then,” she said. “Any outside noise is not really relevant to me.”
Titmus, whose coach used to call Ledecky’s name in training for motivation, is looking forward to competing with Ledecky for the first time since the Tokyo Games.
“There will be three women, hopefully, very close to the world record or breaking the world record,” he said. “To be the hunter or the hunted, I’m just going to go in there and give it a shot.”
Titmus rated his chances as with Ledecky and McIntosh, but the Canadian who trains in Florida has the momentum.
McIntosh broke Titmus’ world record by 32 hundredths on March 28, lowering it to 3:56.40. She also broke the world record in the 400m IM at the Canadian trials and is the fastest in the world in four events this year.
McIntosh was asked if she will be faster at worlds than at trials.
“I’m not going to second-guess things like that,” he said. “I try not to focus on that at all.”
Titmus won the Australian trials in June in 3:58.47, the second fastest time in the world this year. It’s still two seconds off McIntosh’s record, but Titmus has gained confidence since then.
“At the beginning of the year, I wasn’t very happy with where I was, and I’ve really changed my mindset. … I just had a lot going on in my personal life that kind of overrode my focus on swimming,” he said. “Especially in the last month, I feel like I’ve done things in training that I’ve never done before.”
Before Titmus, Ledecky had held the world record since 2014, dropping to 3:56.46 before Titmus took it in May 2022.
Ledecky’s best time this year is 3:58.84, which is pretty much in line with his best times at major international meets over the years.
He specifically recalled 2013, when he ran the 400m freestyle at the international level for the first time at the world championships. Ledecky smashed her personal best by 4.23 seconds at the meet to become just the second woman to break four minutes in the event.
Since then, Ledecky has broken four minutes another 25 times. In that span, only two other women have broken four minutes: McIntosh and Titmus.
“I definitely have a lot of good memories of racing with a lot of different people in that race,” Ledecky said. “I think this year is no different.”
