In what may have been the best championship race of her career, Katie Ledecky won an 800m freestyle that lived up to the hype, becoming the first swimmer to capture a seventh world title in one event.
Ledecky swam 8:05.62 to beat Australian Lani Pallister (8:05.98) and Canadian Summer McIntosh (8:07.29) in a showdown among the three fastest women in history in the event.
“It’s been a really great season, and I think coming into tonight, no matter what the outcome was, I was going to be really happy with my season,” Ledecky said on Peacock. “I think that just took the pressure off and allowed me to enjoy the race and kind of appreciate that moment.”
It’s her 23rd world title (second to Michael Phelps’ 26) and 30th world medal (second to Phelps’ 33). The U.S. added golds Saturday from Gretchen Walsh (50m butterfly) and the mixed-gender 4x100m freestyle relay (world record).
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Since Ledecky’s 2012 Olympic breakout at age 15, no challenger previously finished within one second of her in a championship distance final (a combined 18 Olympic and world championships 800m and 1500m races).
But McIntosh, an 18-year-old who won three 2024 Olympic golds, planted doubt by swimming the third-fastest time in history at the Canadian trials in June. It was 95 hundredths off Ledecky’s latest world record of 8:04.12 that she set in May.
Ledecky then trailed Saturday’s final at 700 meters — a tiny 14 hundredths behind McIntosh, who faded in the last 100.
Pallister was the surprise of the race, sticking near Ledecky and McIntosh. She then charged home with the fastest last 50 — taking 4.86 seconds off her Australian record time to become the closest runner-up in Ledecky’s 19 career global distance titles.
“Getting the silver behind the greatest distance (swimmer) is wicked,” Pallister said, according to World Aquatics.
Ledecky celebrated with a fist splash into the water, as she has been known to do after significant victories. After getting out of the pool, she embraced her coach, Anthony Nesty.
McIntosh, who grew up with a Ledecky quote on her wall, added the 800m free to her global championship program for the first time since placing 11th at the Tokyo Olympics at age 14.
She wanted to challenge Ledecky, and she wanted to become the second swimmer after Phelps to win five individual titles at a single worlds.
In the end, she said she was thinking too much about Ledecky beside her during the final rather than swim her own race.
“Obviously that’s not even close to what I wanted time-wise, place-wise, how I executed the race,” McIntosh said of her bronze, according to World Aquatics. “I just want to say congratulations to Katie and Lani of course, they had amazing swims.
“Lots to learn, and this is my favorite race so that definitely will fuel me to continue to do it until I master it and execute it the way I want it and stand on top of the podium at the international level.”
McIntosh will bid Sunday, on the last day of the meet, to finish with four golds in the 400m individual medley, where she is an overwhelming favorite (7 a.m. ET, Peacock).
For at least one more year, though, Ledecky is still the distance freestyle queen.
Gretchen Walsh fills U.S. women’s swim worlds gold set
Walsh adds 50m fly world title to 100m crown
Having already won gold in the women’s 100m butterfly earlier in the competition, Gretchen Walsh swam a time of 24.83 seconds to add the 50m world title as well at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.
Earlier Saturday, Walsh added the 50m fly title to her 100m fly victory from last Monday.
She swam 24.83 seconds, distancing silver medalist Alexandria Perkins by 48 hundredths — greater than the margin separating Perkins from last place in the race.
Of the 42 women’s and men’s events on the world championships program, the women’s 50m fly was the only one the U.S. had never won.
The U.S. has won at least one medal in all 16 women’s events held so far at these worlds. There are four women’s finals left on Sunday. The U.S. has never won a medal in every women’s event at worlds and has done so on the men’s side once — at the first edition in 1973.
Walsh was one of the majority of U.S. swim team members affected to varying degrees by acute gastroenteritis, or a stomach bug, leading into worlds.
“It felt like myself again in the water,” she said Saturday. She said Monday that her body had felt “fragile.”
She has one individual event left at these worlds: the 50m free. She owns the world’s top time this year.
Gretchen Walsh has never won an individual global title in a long-course pool. She could leave worlds with four of them.
In the mixed 4x100m free, Jack Alexy, Patrick Sammon, Kate Douglass and Torri Huske combined to swim the world record of 3:18.48. The event is not on the Olympic program.
Australian Kaylee McKeown and American Regan Smith went one-two in the 200m backstroke, just as they did in all three backstrokes at the 2023 Worlds, both backstrokes at the 2024 Olympics and in the 100m back earlier at these worlds.
American Claire Curzan, who swept the backstrokes at the 2024 Worlds in the absence of McKeown and Smith, took bronze Saturday. Both U.S. entries won a medal in all three women’s backstroke events.
McKeown clocked 2:03.33, the third-fastest time in history. McKeown and Smith combine to own 22 of the top 23 times in history.
Frenchman Maxime Grousset took the men’s 100m fly in 49.62, the third-fastest time in history behind Caeleb Dressel’s top two.
Australian Cameron McEvoy and Brit Ben Proud went one-two in the men’s 50m free, repeating their finishes from the Olympics. Alexy added bronze to his 100m free silver.
Summer McIntosh crossed an ocean and took up a new sport that helped her have one of the best swim meets in history.
