2018 PAN PACIFIC CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Thursday, August 9 – Tuesday, August 14, 2018
- Tokyo Tatsumi International Swimming Center, Tokyo, Japan
- Meet site
- Psych Sheet
- Start Lists
- Meet Results
Australian Ariarne Titmus became the third woman ever to break four minutes in the 400 freestyle at day 3 finals of the Pan Pacific Championships in Tokyo, taking out the Commonwealth, Oceanian and Australian National Records in a time of 3:59.66.
Swimming head-to-head with world record holder Katie Ledecky, Titmus pushed the pace early, and after Ledecky opened up a lead of 1.3 seconds at the halfway mark, the 17-year-old held even with the American for the rest of the race.
Ledecky was under world record pace through the 250, but just fell off at the end to win in 3:58.50, her 6th fastest swim ever and just off her 2014 meet record of 3:58.37. Titmus actually out-split Ledecky on the back-half, and came in for the silver in 3:59.66 which breaks Joanne Jackson of Great Britain’s Commonwealth Record of 4:00.60 from 2009, along with her own Oceanian and Australian marks of 4:00.93 from the Commonwealth Games.
In terms of the splits, Ledecky was 1:57.01/2:01.49 for the opening and closing 200s, while Titmus was 1:58.31/2:01.35.
Titmus joins Ledecky and former world record holder Federica Pellegrini of Italy as the only women ever under 4:00, moving Past Jackson, Leah Smith and Rebecca Adlington to become the 3rd-fastest performer in history. She’s also now the 2nd-fastest performer ever in a textile suit.
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Fastest Performers Ever
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| 1 | Katie Ledecky | 3:56.46 |
| 2 | Federica Pellegrini | 3:59.15 |
| 3 | Ariarne Titmus | 3:59.66 |
| 4 | Joanne Jackson | 4:00.60 |
| 5 | Leah Smith | 4:00.65 |
| 6 | Rebecca Adlington | 4:00.79 |
| 7 | Camille Muffat | 4:01.13 |
| 8 | Jazz Carlin | 4:01.23 |
| 9 | Li Bingjie | 4:01.75 |
| 10 | Allison Schmitt | 4:01.77 |
This is the first individual Commonwealth Record of Titmus’ career, as she was a few seconds off of Adlington’s 800 free mark (8:14.10) earlier in the meet when she broke her the Oceanian and Australian Record. We’ve also seen Commonwealth Records at the meet from Cate Campbell (100 free), Taylor Ruck (200 free), and the Aussie women’s 4×200 free relay which Titmus was a key member of.
It will be interesting that approximately 5 women will be under 4 minutes in Tokyo.
It will be interesting to see Titmus in the serious race without Ledecky. Was Katie a pacemaker for Titmus, playing a “rabbit” role. Or vice versa, Ariarna may execute different strategy if not the actual race. Is there any information that she swam under 4 minutes in practice. Still too little known about the style and abilities of this swimmer.
It would seem pretty unlikely that she would swim sub 4 in practice if she barely did it for the first time in what was probably one of the biggest races of her career.
She swam 4:01 at trials by herself mostly untapered from what I understand don’t think she needs Ledecky to push her
Katie hasn’t lost a 400 LCM free in years and years. How would Ariane be able to beat Katie?
The difference in this race was laps 2,3, and 4. The rest of the laps were pretty even.
The AUS coaches will be studying this video. Ariane will have to be ready to try to outkick Katie in the final 100, kind of like what Mack Horton did to Sun Yang in Rio.
Ariarne Titmus is no match to Ledecky in long distances. So it is not like she has endurance advantage. The swimmer who has better 200 will win 400 as well. And that is how this race was swum today and that is how it will be swum in the future competition between these two swimmers. If Titmus can’t progress with her raw speed she will be behind Katie unless the later one isn’t in good shape.
Yeah, that’s the point. Titmus is close, but needs something more to beat Ledecky.
Titmus is the first one to get within a second of her in a head-to-head race in many years.
Video of the race
https://youtu.be/sepdOtQXcyw
Is there any other video where commentator knows what it means to break 4min barrier? This guy in this video has no clue that that is a historic race of almost same intense when Blume challenged Sjostrom in European Championships.
It’s a very good news for the sport of swimming. Congratulations to Ariarne Titmus. Five years ago 16 years old Katie Ledecky opened this door and now thanks to Ariarne it is the place to be. What was recently considered an elite times: 4:03- 4:04 will be now a good time for prelim race. When it is only one swimmer under 4 min then we were dealing with something very unique. When it is more than one then it becomes the target to reach in swimming career for many other young swimmers. If you don’t make it a target you will never reach it.
I know it’s a great swim, but the headline ought to List somewhere she was second.
^^^RIGHT? The headline should also list:
1) Her age
2) Her actual time
3) Her splits
4) Her previous best time
5) Her post-race thoughts
6) Her coach’s name
7) Her country (duh)
8) What the time of the winner was
9) That she’s never going to be good as Katie Ledecky
10) Just the words “Katie Ledecky” written 10x over.
It’s too damn laborious to read whole articles. Just put it all in the headline ‘somewhere’ and it saves us all a click and a couple of scrolls.
We’ve toyed with the idea of expanding our headlines to 800 words apiece. It’s the future of true journalism, I’d say.
Can’t deny that she’s slowly getting there…
Impressive for sure.
Not so slowly..
“Titmus actually out-split Ledecky on the back-half, ..”
Is this right? I find this unbelievable. What are the splits?
http://swim.seiko.co.jp/en/2018/S80701/ranking/eng11R050.pdf
Added in the article!
The situation is actually more complicated than pictured.
Ledecky vs Titmus
-0.04; +0.37; +0.31; +0.66; +0.17; -0.12; +0.01; -0.20
The right way to describe it that the second half was even with Titmus outperform Ledecky slightly at last fifty. That could be excusable for the leader in tough race who has more than a body length advantage. The challenger on the other hand pushes herself to the limit at the very finish. I think that this race was well executed and controlled by Ledecky. But it was definitely not the race of “seeing Ledecky’s feet”. This is the beginning of competition between two great swimmers.