2021 US OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPS
The legendary Katie Ledecky has been on fire this week in Greensboro. Tonight, she broke the U.S. Open Meet Record for the second time today with a 1:55.47, winning by over three seconds.
Coming into this morning, the meet record stood at 1:56.24, a mark which Ledecky set back in 2019, when this meet was held at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ledecky took down that record this morning with a 1:56.06, then she shaved another four-tenths off of that time with tonight’s swim.
Morning splits: 27.59/29.27/29.50/29.70
Evening splits: 27.32/29.00/29.25/29.80
Compared to this morning, Ledecky went out faster and continued to swim just a couple tenths faster on each of the first three 50s, before tailing off of this morning’s pace just a tad on last 50. Still, that strategy worked, as she was nearly as fast as she was at the Olympics.
While there are a lot of factors that affect how a swimmer performs at any given meet, Ledecky’s success this week certainly seems to be a sign that shifting her training to Florida has been paying off for her. She’s now broken meet records in the 800 free, the 400 free, and the 200 free (twice) this week.
She is slated to swim the 1500 free tomorrow. That’s another event where she, unsurprisingly, holds the meet record, which she also set at the 2019 iteration of this meet.