Naturally, after destroying the World Record in the 1500 freestyle on Tuesday, Lotte Friis and Katie Ledecky must have the World Record in the 800 free lined up in their sights next.
The 1500 World Record had sort of a weird feel to it. It was done before the supersuits, it was done at an in-season meet (the Swim Meet of Champions), and nobody had really been all that close to it (Alessia Filippi was a 15:44.93, about two-and-a-half seconds away from it, Friis had been 15:46 in rubber and 15:49 in textile, and Janet Evans was a 15:52 all the way back in 1988).
But the 800, we know is a great record. Rebecca Adlington’s 8:14.10 was unbelievably fast when it was done in 2008. At the time, it was a World Record by two seconds (which we used to think was a large amount by which to break a World Record.
And it doesn’t stand a chance.
After pushing each other to such great heights, Friis and Ledecky will undoubtedly be feeling a little bit of week-long fatigue. Ledecky, you’ll note, has had the 400 already, which Friis has not. Ledecky will also be coming off of the 800 free relay final, which means a late night before the 800 starts.
That’s not a slight against either, but nobody swims a 1500 that fast and pops up fresh the next morning. The good news (for us, bad news for Adlington’s record) is that they get a few days off after their 1500’s.
Regardless, look at the splits. Thanks to our earlier efforts to put the 50-by-50 splits into a spreadsheet, we were able to use some Excel magic to quickly calculate the “fastest” splits for each swimmer by compiling their best 50’s.
| Friis | Ledecky | |
| Best 100 Meters | 58.88 | 57.61 |
| Best 200 Meters | 2:00.39 | 1:58.80 |
| Best 400 Meters | 4:04.60 | 4:02.92 |
| Best 800 Meters | 8:15.47 | 8:13.88 |
Yes, you read that right. In theoretical meters, Ledecky already broke the 800 World Record by two-tenths of a second.
Other interesting observations about the two’s splits: Ledecky’s best 200 meters were about 1.6 seconds faster than Friis’. That’s basically what made the difference in this race. As anyone who was watching this race could tell, Ledecky didn’t chip away at Friis. It wasn’t two-tenths here, and two-tenths there. Ledecky had about three 50’s that blew Friis away (the last three 50’s to be precise), and the two just slugged at each other the rest of the time.
Goodbye World Record. When this one is broken, there will be no women’s long course World Records left from 2008, and only two men’s.
Adlington was only about 0.4% faster than Evans’ nearly 20 year old record, and Adlington swam in a high tech suit. Also notice that Adlington and Friis were from countries that were not swimming powers.
If you are from a swimming power like the US, then your best chance for a gold medal in the Olympics is in the relays–which involve swimming shorter races. I think that has had the effect of getting most top swimmers in countries like the US to focus on shorter events. That in turn means swimmers like Adliington and Friis have a better chance at longer events.
At the end of the 1500 race, Friis was barely able to accelerate. Only her last 50 was a bit faster than her previous splits. I can’t really see a strategy for Friis to beat Ledecky. Going out even faster isn’t going to help given Ledecky’s 400 meter speed.
Ah a new thing frop the USA. We knew you had weird stuff like yards, miles, ounces, etc.. now a new one “theoretical meters” ;-)))) Let’s ask FINA to recognise it [ re – ;-)) ]
Are we talking about long course theoretical metres or short course? These details are important 🙂
I just want to see te race dang it.
Someone should do this with with Sun Yang’s record and see what they get :P….
Something tells me the 7:38 textile record isn’t too fast
My geek dream has come true – the perfect sport and the world’s greatest multi-purpose piece of software joined in perfect harmony to create beauty.
Katie Ledecky is in a really better shape then Olympics, when she’d almost broke that record. But this theoretical meters doesn’t mean a lot.. despite they will definitely swim under the record. I mean, I know their paces were insane, but I could break this record too (actually not) in theoretical meters, if I swim 1500 in 50 fast, 50 slow, for example… like 30 seconds here, 50 seconds there… but anyway, they are 2 monsters and I’m really excited to these 800.
Can’t wait to see her take it down!