The 1500 meter freestyle is to swimming what a 5K is to the running world. It’s a distance race but not a distance race.
In women’s swimming there has been one dominant force in this event for well over a decade – Katie Ledecky.
She swam her first international 1500M as a 16-year-old at the 2013 World Championship in Barcelona and won in a world record time of 15:36.53, winning by two seconds. She established a new world record a year later at the Pan Pacific Championships, swimming 15:28.36 while winning by a whopping 27 seconds.
She won the World Championship at that distance again in 2015, 2017, 2022 (delayed a year due to Covid-19 and the postponed 2020 Summer Olympics), 2023, and 2025. She was ill in 2019 and forced to withdraw from the 1500M that Championship.
The distance has only been contested at the Olympic Games since 2020 (actually 2021 in Tokyo due to Covid) and she won the event both that year and again in 2024 in Paris which is where this week’s Fan Teaser image is from. Ledecky won the event by over 10 seconds while establishing a new Olympic Record of 15:30.02.
Her stranglehold on this event is evidenced in the chart below (generated before last year’s Olympics and last week’s World Championships in Singapore). Those are the top 20 times in the event’s history. Do note that Italy’s Simona Quadarella‘s runner-up finish last week at the World Championships in a European Record time of 15:31.79 would now be the 11th best all-time. Ledecky owns the other 19.
For what it’s worth, Ledecky is also the pre-eminent women’s swimmer of the past decade-plus in the 800-meter freestyle. She’s won the event in every major international competition (Worlds and Olympics) dating back to 2012 when she was a 15-year-old and capped it off at the World Championships in Singapore this week by holding off the 18-year-old Canadian challenger, Summer McIntosh, by over a second when she won the event’s 800M Free in a World Championship-record time of 8:05.62.
That win, Ledecky’s final one at this year’s World Championships, brings her career total at the Worlds to 30, second only to Michael Phelps (33). Her 23 golds in those is second only to Phelps’ 26. Her 18 individual World Championships are the most in the pool … by anyone … ever.
- Full Results of from the World Aquatic Championships may be found here.
Just to review, The Fan Teaser was the creation of former Ann Arbor News Sports Editor Geoff Larcom. Longtime friend and fellow Ann Arbor News alum, Pat Schutte, took it to heights previously unknown. We aim to keep it alive here at The Sports Fan Project. The cropped photo and the accompanying clue give you an idea as to who or what the image is of. We invite you to use the Comment option to take a crack at solving the Teaser and, if you’re so inclined, participate in some good-spirited banter with your fellow sports fans. The Fan Teaser will appear each Friday morning with the reveal coming to you Sunday.