thousands in the crowd cheered her on, the bright lights of Lucas Oil Stadium shone into a pool that had taken over a football field in Indianapolis. Katie Ledecky touched the wall in first place, looked up at the screen where the results were displayed, and shook her head. She took off her goggles and bobbed in the water before turning back to reach again toward the wall.
Only then did Katie Grimes, the second-place finisher in the 1,500-meter freestyle, touch the wall. A full 20 seconds had elapsed between Ledecky's finish at the U.S.
Olympic trials and that of Grimes, and Ledecky had secured yet another spot on the team for Paris, as well as officially taken over all of the fastest 19 times in the race's history. But she wasn't satisfied. Moments later, with the water dripping from her suit and her swim cap still firmly in place atop her head, the 27-year-old Ledecky spoke to NBC's Melissa Stark in an interview that was shown on the jumbotron.
"I would have loved to have been a little faster, but I'll take it," Ledecky said flatly before perking up slightly. "I'll be better in a few weeks." A few hours later, she didn't seem much happier about her performance.
As she spoke to a room full of reporters, she called her race "a little sloppy" and admitted she had been "expecting to go a lot faster." "I know I have a lot more in me than the end result today," Ledecky said. She was simply stating the facts when she said she could have been faster.
Her time at trials was more tha.