Rio Olympic 2016: A look at the five world records so far

Katie Ledecky (Women’s 400-meter freestyle)

Katie Ledecky proved why the buzz is around her at the Rio Olympics. The 19-year-old American first created an Olympic record in the heats of the 400m freestyle where she raced to 3:58.71 to grab the top spot. In the final, Ledecky outdid herself with another staggering display.

This time, she swam to the gold in 3:56:46 to set a new world record timing that was almost 5 seconds ahead of the second-placed Jazmin Carlin, who clocked 4:01:23. This is her second medal of the Rio Games after she played a crucial role in guiding the 4x100m freestyle team to a silver medal.

Not surprisingly, she was the youngest person to feature on the Time 100 list of Time Magazine in 2016. The teenage prodigy is on a mission. Ledecky, who already scooped up the 800m freestyle gold in London at the age of 15, still has two more individual freestyle events at Rio.

Be prepared to be dazzled by the freestyle queen, who is already a nine-time world champion!

About the author

Sudeshna is a veteran Indian Sports and International Tennis journalist as well as editor at Sportskeeda. She has an overall experience of over 10 years with top publications like The Bridge, Fox Sports Asia, and gained a keen interest in Indian sports since the 2002 Commonwealth and Asian Games when she was in school.

Sudeshna holds a Master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She attends tournaments regularly and being a highly experienced journalist, she ensures she only contacts the correct people from her network for the most authentic information to be put in her articles.

Sudeshna’s favorite Indian athlete is PV Sindhu owing to her big-tournament performances. She also admires Tennis legend Rafael Nadal for his resilience and has witnessed the Spaniard in action at the French Open, due to which, Roland Garros is her all-time favorite Grand Slam tournament.

Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal win at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics made a lasting impact on Sudeshna. She has also interviewed him along with Badminton star Chirag Shetty and several other sports personalities. She has done on-ground reporting on multiple ITF tournaments along with the Premier Badminton League, Asian Boxing Championships and the Davis Cup.

When not using her skills and years of experience in crafting compelling content, Sudeshna likes to read, watch movies and travel.

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Edited by Staff Editor