Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The world belongs to Ledecky


Yesterday I noted Mo Farah's eradication of the British 2-mile (running) record, held by the esteemed Steve Ovett prior, and then I said that Mo's feat of feet was not the most dominant distance athletic achievement of the past few days.

The most dominant distance athletic achievement of the past few days was what Katie Ledecky did at the Pan Pacific swimming championships.

She "merely" won the 200, anchored the 800 free relay with a comeback leg to win it, won the 800 freestyle, won the 400 freestyle in world record time, and finished off with a world record six second smash of the 1500.  And may I just be a homer and note the great Ledecky is from DC suburban Maryland;  Michael Phelps is from Baltimore suburban Maryland, and previous 1500 world record holder Kate Ziegler is from DC suburban Virginia.  There have been several other world class swimmers out of this region (Katie Hoff, Anita Nall, Mike Barrowman, and Tom Dolan come to mind), so it's easy to say that a good portion of our world swimming success comes from this particular region.

And the University of Maryland doesn't have an NCAA Division I swimming program anymore.  Go figure.






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