Katie Ledecky - the 18-year-old American prodigy who broke a world record without trying - is the most dominant swimmer alive
At the FINA World Championships in Kazan, Russia, Ledecky accidentally broke her own world record in the 1,500m freestyle during a preliminary race in which she wasn't swimming her hardest.
"I wasn't kicking much," she said after the race.
After touching the wall, she seemed surprised to learn she'd set a new world record.
In the final of the same event one day later, she broke her own 24-hour-old world record by over two seconds, clocking in at 15 minutes and 25.48 seconds. For some context, in 2004, 19-year-old Ryan Lochte swam in the men's 1,500 at the US Olympic Trials and finished in eighth place. His time: 15:28.37.
Lochte is an 11-time Olympic medalist and arguably the best male American swimmer today, though he has found his success in shorter distance races. He has swam with Ledecky and confessed that she blew him out of the water.
"Want to go in an hour?" Ledecky responded, laughing.
"No, I want to go right now, 'cause you're tired," Phelps, the record-holding 22-time medalist, quipped back.
"This is somebody whose going to become very famous very suddenly," the commentators added quite presciently.
The 2012 Olympics was only the beginning. Ledecky has gone on to break nine world records in just the past two years. Currently, she holds the fastest times ever in the 400, 800, and 1,500m freestyles. This week at the World Championships, she has won the 400m and 1,500m freestyle.
Swimvortex.com had a nice roundup of the extent of Ledecky's dominance in her the three events. She has seven of the 19 fastest times ever in the 400m, eight of the 16 fastest times in the 800m, and six of the 14 fastest times in the 1,500m. She has also done it despite competing in an era where faster synthetic racing suits have been banned by FINA because they are believed to be performance enhancing.
Ledecky has committed to Stanford, though she won't enroll until in the fall of 2016. Over the next year she will train for, and likely dominate, the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. If she can continue her historic run of form, Ledecky will have had quite the Gap Year - and will be quite the college freshman.