Los Angeles, May 17 (DIN NEWS)<\/b>\u00a0Five-time Olympic swimming champion Katie Ledecky smashed her own 1,500m freestyle world record by five seconds in her first race as a professional.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old American star touched the wall in 15min 20.48sec at the Pro Swim event in Indianapolis, obliterating her previous best of 15:25.48 set at the World Championships in Kazan in 2015.<\/p>\n
“I was pretty surprised when I saw the ’20,'” Ledecky said with a little laugh, adding that she thought as the swim unfolded that she would be somewhere under 15:30, maybe.<\/p>\n
“When I saw the 15:20 I was pretty shocked,” she said.<\/p>\n
This week’s meet in Indianapolis is Ledecky’s first since turning professional following the NCAA collegiate championships in March.<\/p>\n
“My first pro swim — that’s one I’ll never forget,” said Ledecky, who added that so far she hadn’t felt any different in her first meet as a professional.<\/p>\n
Ledecky won gold in the 800m at the 2012 Olympics and followed it up with four golds and a silver at the Rio Olympics two years ago.<\/p>\n
The 1,500m free will be introduced as an Olympic event for women at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Ledecky was under world-record pace for much of Wednesday’s race and touched 49 seconds clear of the nearest finisher in her heat.<\/p>\n
She now owns the eight fastest times in history in the event dating to 2013 and has 14 career world-record swims.<\/p>\n
“It’s a feeling that never gets old,” said Ledecky, who hadn’t set a world record since the Rio Games.<\/p>\n
“I knew I was going to have a good swim,” Ledecky said. “I’ve just been training really, really well, doing some things that I haven’t done before.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t know if the good training that I’ve put in these past six weeks was going to translate immediately here or if it was going to be down the road. I got into the race and felt good and just tried to hold steady the whole way.”<\/p>\n
Ledecky will have plenty more chances to impress in Indianapolis, where she is also entered in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle and the 200m and 400m individual medley.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Los Angeles, May 17 (DIN NEWS)\u00a0Five-time Olympic swimming champion Katie Ledecky smashed her own 1,500m freestyle world record by five seconds in her first race as a professional. The 21-year-old American star touched the wall in 15min 20.48sec at the Pro Swim event in Indianapolis, obliterating her previous best of 15:25.48 set at the World Championships in Kazan in 2015. “I was pretty surprised when I saw the ’20,’” Ledecky said with a little laugh, adding that she thought as the swim unfolded that she would be somewhere under 15:30,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11155,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11156,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154\/revisions\/11156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}