Katie Ledecky has brushed aside her disappointment at losing her 400m freestyle crown to Ariarne Titmus, setting the fastest time in the heats of the 200m freestyle.
Just hours after the pair fought out a titanic battle in the 400m, they were back in the pool for the 200m.
Ledecky stopped the clocks in 1:55.28 to be the fastest of the 16 qualifiers for the semi finals, ahead of Canada’s Penny Oleksiak.
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Australia’s Madi Wilson was third in 1:55.87, a fraction ahead of Titmus who recorded 1:55.88. The world record holder, Italy’s Federica Pellegrini, has some work to do, after clocking the 15th fastest time.
Almost unbelievably, Ledecky then backed up again for the heats of the women’s 1500m, a new addition to the Olympic program in Tokyo.
Showing no signs of a hectic program, Ledecky cruised to victory in her heat, qualifying fastest for the final with a time of 15:35.35, around 15 seconds outside her own world record, set in 2018.
Ledecky was more than six seconds clear of her nearest rivals in the heats.
The two Australians in the field, Maddy Gough (15:56.81) and Kiah Melverton (15:58.96) made it into the final, in seventh and eighth respectively. Melverton had just 0.84 in hand over the ninth placed swimmer.
There was disappointment for Australia’s two swimmers in the men’s 200m butterfly, with both David Morgan and Matt Temple missing the semi finals.
World record holder, Hungary’s Kristof Milak, looks almost unbeatable, clocking a time of 1:53.58, nearly a second ahead of anyone else, despite cruising the last 25m of his heat.
Temple finished seventh in his heat in a time of 1:56.25, while Morgan was eighth in his heat in 2:00.27, nearly five seconds outside the time he posted at last month’s selection trials.
“I just died – I’m bitterly disappointed with that,” the Rio relay bronze medallist said.
“You don’t come to an Olympic Games and swim that slowly. I’ve got to figure out why that went so bad.
“I’m not really too sure, I’ll have to look at it again.”I’ll bounce back – you get knocked down, you get back up again.”
Elsewhere American Kate Douglass has set the fastest time in the heats of the women’s 200m individual medley.
Douglass clocked 2:09.16 in her heat, ahead of Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu (2:09.70).
There was a dead heat for the third fastest time of 2:09.94, with Great Britain’s Abbie Wood and USA’s Alex Walsh recording that time.
There were no Australians in the event.
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