The US did not win the 4×200 meter freestyle relay at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort on Katie Ledecky’s part.
Ledecky swam anchor in the relay and entered the pool trailing Australia by a length, and China by about two lengths. It didn’t take long for Ledecky to surpass Australia. She set her sight on China as well, but ran out of distance to overtake first place. The Chinese relay team ended up setting a world record with a time of 7:40.33.
WORLD RECORD!
China takes gold in the women's 4x200m relay, as @TeamUSA beats Australia for silver! #TokyoOlympics
: NBC
: https://t.co/Sdse4JEfNh
: NBC Sports App pic.twitter.com/m3hSgc9dWo— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) July 29, 2021
Even though the US was not able to take gold, Ledecky still posted the fastest split among all swimmers in the event. Her split of 1:53.76 beat the entire field.
Katie Ledecky had the fastest split of the field by .61 after placing fifth in the individual 200m freestyle. 1:53.76 relay split after going 1:55.21 in the individual 200m free.
— Nick Zaccardi (@nzaccardi) July 29, 2021
The relay teams went so fast that China, US and Australia all surpassed the previous world record time.
