Blueseventy Swim of the Week: Ledecky Ends Longest Career WR Drought

b70_520x70-r10

Disclaimer: Blueseventy Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The blueSeventy Swim is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.

For most ordinary swimmers, setting one world record over a twenty-year career is considered a massive success. But Katie Ledecky is no ordinary swimmer.

In fact, when Ledecky broke the world record in the 1500 free last week, she ended what was the longest world record drought of her career by almost 300 days.*

First, let’s acknowledge the lunacy of tracking how long it’s been between world records when a single world record break would be a career zenith for 99.9% of swimmers. Ledecky has broken long course world records 14 times in her career, with all of her world records coming within a span of just under five years. Her first world mark in long course meters came in July of 2013, in the very same 1500 free where she broke her latest record last weekend at the Indianapolis Pro Swim Series. In that time, Ledecky has lowered the record by more than 22 seconds from Kate Ziegler‘s old mark.

Running through each of Ledecky’s world record swims in chronological order, we see just how insane her pace was between 2013 and 2016. 13 of her 14 world record breaks came in that span, with the longest span between world record swims lasting only 344 days – that means since first cracking the world record books, Ledecky had never gone a full year without breaking another world mark.

But following the 2016 Olympics, Ledecky went 642 days without a world record, causing some to wonder if her torrid pace was unsustainable, or if the greatest distance swimmer in history had reached a plateau. 2017 was her first calendar year without a world record since her 2013 world record breakout, though that year did still include plenty of world-best marks in short course yards. (We’re not counting those as ‘world records’ though they are technically the fastest times ever swum. With much of the world never swimming in the yards format, a historic best time in SCY isn’t a great direct comparison to a long course meters record).

Ledecky, of course, quelled those concerns with her blistering mid-season world record 15:20.48 in Indy, swimming faster almost across the board than she did at the 2017 World Championships. That suggests we could be in store for something special this summer.

Here’s a look at Ledecky’s list of long course world record-breaking swims along with the time between – in days – each swim:

Date Event Time Time Between
7/30/2013 1500 free 15:36.53
8/3/2013 800 free 8:13.86 4 days
6/19/2014 1500 free 15:34.23 320 days
6/22/2014 800 free 8:11.00 3 days
8/9/2014 400 free 3:58.86 48 days
8/23/2014 400 free 3:58.37 14 days
8/24/2014 1500 free 15:28.36 1 day
8/3/2015 1500 free 15:27.71 344 days
8/4/2015 1500 free 15:25.48 1 day
8/8/2015 800 free 8:07.39 4 days
1/17/2016 800 free 8:06.68 162 days
8/7/2016 400 free 3:56.46 203 days
8/12/2016 800 free 8:04.79 5 days
5/16/2018 1500 free 15:20.48 642 days

*Before we get pedantic and note the 16-year “drought” between Ledecky’s birth and her first world record in 2013, let’s take a moment and think about whether that’s really relevant at all to this conversation.

Race video here:

WE MAKE SWIMMERS.

There isn’t a second that goes by when the team at blueseventy aren’t thinking about you. How you eat, breathe, train, play, win, lose, suffer and celebrate. How swimming is every part of what makes you tick. Aptly named because 70% of the earth is covered in water, blueseventy is a world leader in the pool and open water. Since 1993, we design, test, refine and craft products using superior materials and revolutionary details that equate to comfort, freedom from restriction and ultimately a competitive advantage in the water. This is where we thrive. There is no substitute and no way around it. We’re all for the swim.

2016 blueseventy banner for Swim of the Week b70_300x300-aftsVisit blueseventy.com/pages/swim to learn more.

Instagram: @blueseventy

Twitter: @blueseventy

Facebook: facebook.com/blueseventy

blueseventy is a SwimSwam partner.

In This Story

14
Leave a Reply

Subscribe
Notify of

14 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Danjohnrob
6 years ago

Wow! Ledecky has lowered the WR in the 1500 by 22 seconds! They could run a (very fast) heat of the men’s 50 Free in that time! Amazing!

Yozhik
Reply to  Danjohnrob
6 years ago

22 sec improvement of WR in 1500
Should be 10 sec improvement in 800. And it is.
Should be 5 sec improvement in 400 . And it is. (Forget about Pellegrini with her very helpful swimming suit)
Should be 2.5 sec improvement in 200. And it isn’t. The 1:51 will never happen. That is where Katie’s magic ends.
😀

Jim C
6 years ago

With the Olympics in 2016 and Ledecky taking a year off from school, it would have been very surprising if she broke either of her Rio WRs last year. Something on a par with or slightly better than 2015 Worlds might have been expected–but what we saw was not quite as good. What we saw at Indy was not up to the level of her Rio performance, but it was so good that it would no longer be very surprising if she broke one of her Rio records this year–and that was not the case before Indy.

Yozhik
Reply to  Jim C
6 years ago

The following are Ledecky’s personal bests in her 6 major disciplines. With the exception of 1500 FR all of them were made in 2016. So they correspond same great form she was in.
100 FR: 53.2 -53.3 (based on her 52.6 split)
200 FR: 1:53.73
400 FR: 3:56.46
800 FR: 8:04.79
1500 FR: 15:20.48
400 IM: 4:37.93
So if she approaches again this form the most probable candidate for improvement will be 400IM, because she wasn’t tapered when it was made. The next one will be 800 because it was at the end of the meet. The less probable will be 200, because it was the only one where she was close to… Read more »

Tammy Touchpad Error
Reply to  Yozhik
6 years ago

Looks like she mustve swam through NCs this year. Didnt need to do any real rest. Maybe a week of rest and backed off weights for 2 weeks?

Wondering
6 years ago

the swim of the week was clearly 51.03

USA
Reply to  Wondering
6 years ago

Hehe sure…..

Yozhik
6 years ago

The longest world record drought in the life of Katie Ledecky was the period from March 17, 1997 to August 2, 2012 😀
Katie Ledecky has SIX years of setting world records. I don’t have statistics available that deep but it can be the record by itself to have that long super productive carrier. This measure of someone’s career success is more representative in my opinion than number of years of winning some titles or number of records by itself.

SwimGeek
Reply to  Yozhik
6 years ago

I agree with your point, but minor quibble — she didn’t set the WR when she won London in 2012. First WR would have been 2013. So only at 5 yrs now.

Yozhik
Reply to  SwimGeek
6 years ago

The 8:14.63 was the textile (and the real one) world record in 800FR LCM
Adlington’s 8:14.10 result was shown during assisted swim. If you’d like me to explain what I mean by assisted swim go to the swimswam main page and look (don’t click) at “SET OF THE WEEK” picture. High-tech suits are no different.
What FINA keeps in its record books is the completely different story. FINA books keeping is very controversial. It includes DDR records of 1970s, it is a mess with junior records etc .

cbswims
Reply to  Yozhik
6 years ago

Came here to make the same joke, but to be fair she didn’t start swimming until 2003, so we cannot really blame her when she wasn’t even trying : ).

No matter what, it’s a treat to watch her swim. just amazing.

Yozhik
Reply to  cbswims
6 years ago

😀 You are right. The article mentioned the draught in Katie’s career that actually didn’t started until she was 6 year old. I replaced world “career” with the world “life”. It was unfair trick. 😀

bobo gigi
6 years ago

I think you could choose a better photo to illustrate most of the articles about Katie Ledecky. Just my opinion.

Bon Jovi
6 years ago

imagine going 300 days without a world record

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

Read More »