The final time that Katie Ledecky was overwhelmed in a 1,500-meter freestyle occasion was a regional swim meet in Maryland 14 years in the past.

Ledecky was in junior highschool. The swimmer who completed greater than 5 seconds forward of her, Kaitlin Pawlowicz, was going into her senior yr of highschool.

“There’s not, like, a ton of particulars that I can recall,” Pawlowicz mentioned lately. “It was only a midsummer gauge kind of meet to see the place you’re at. Nothing particular or loopy about it.”

The mile, because the 1,500 freestyle is colloquially recognized, is mostly thought of the game’s most grueling occasion. Competing in it requires bodily and psychological stamina, coaching blocks that at their most intense can push 12 miles per day and to disregard the physique’s regular cues that it’s experiencing excruciating ache. Even Ledecky, 27, who loves distance racing and has constructed a profession round it, known as it “totally masochistic” in her lately printed memoir.

For practically each different competitor, it is perhaps the one worst occasion within the Olympic program: a lung-busting, muscle-burning, 15-plus-minute torture take a look at during which they hit the water understanding that they’re primarily swimming for second place.

“You possibly can’t even be upset,” mentioned Jillian Cox, 19, an American distance swimmer who has competed in opposition to Ledecky. “On the primary 50, you’re physique lengths behind. It’s simply superb.”