Katie Ledecky rose to the challenge, as the US swimmer defended her 1,500-meter freestyle crown by a tight margin at yesterday’s Pan Pacific Championships.
Ledecky topped the podium with a time of 15 minutes, 36.09 seconds, edging out Australia’s Lani Pallister by just 2.53 seconds — her narrowest 1,500-meter major tournament win in 13 years.
“Even with a swim I’m not super happy with, it’s just so much fun to be in this environment and get to experience this,” she said afterwards.
Heading into the 2028 Olympics, Ledecky holds the 13 fastest 1,500-meter times on record, with similar dominance in the 800-meter freestyle.
Pallister will attempt to change that on Saturday, after finishing just .36 seconds behind Ledecky in the 2025 Worlds’ 800-meter race.
Pan Pacific Championships coverage runs through Saturday (Peacock).
Women's soccer legend Alex Morgan and Olympic swimmer Missy Franklin lead the University of California, Berkeley's recently announced 2026 Hall of Fame class.
The university will honor the nine-member group at a formal induction ceremony in the fall of 2027.
Alex Morgan: From Cal Standout to US Women's Soccer Legend
Long before she reached the international stage, Morgan was sparking the UC Berkeley attack from 2007 to 2010.
She finished her Cal career with 45 goals and All-American honors before leaving early to turn pro.
That collegiate success carried into a 13-year run with the US women's national team.
During her time on the team, Morgan scored 123 international goals while winning the FIFA Women's World Cup in both 2015 and 2019. She added a gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics and a bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Her influence reached beyond the pitch, too. Morgan was among the USWNT players who sued the US Soccer Federation for gender discrimination in 2019. The case ended with an equal pay agreement that reverberated across women's sports.
She officially retired from pro soccer in September 2024, after becoming pregnant with her second child.
Missy Franklin's Record-Breaking Career in the Pool
Also named to the Cal Hall of Fame class with Morgan is five-time Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin.
Franklin arrived at the University of California campus in 2013 after winning four Olympic gold medals at the 2012 London Games. While at Berkeley, she took home four individual NCAA titles and helped the Golden Bears capture the 2015 team national championship.
She stepped away from competitive swimming December 2018 at age 23, citing chronic shoulder injuries amid other health concerns.
Olympic swimming icon Katie Ledecky has done it again, becoming the first woman to break the 15-minute mile with a time of 14:59.62 at her namesake Katie Ledecky Invitational in Maryland.
Smashing her own US record of 15:01.41, Sunday's sub-15 minute mile gives Ledecky the 1,650-meter freestyle's eight fastest times, with US teammate Erica Sullivan earning the ninth-best in 2019.
"This is a special one for sure," Ledecky said afterwards. "This has been a goal of mine, to break 15 minutes in the 1,650, for probably eight or nine years. So, just putting in the hard work, believing that I could do it someday, and to do it at this meet, is really special."
The 28-year-old Washington, DC, product is the most decorated women's swimmer in the history of the sport, prompting Nation's Capital Swimming — where Ledecky got her start at age six — to name their annual event in her honor earlier this year.
"I definitely was a little nervous before the race, just knowing there were a lot of eyes on me and all that," she continued. "But I knew I could just relax and have fun with it, and whatever happened, happened."
How to watch Katie Ledecky in action
Ledecky's next major competition will likely be the TYR Pro Swim Series, which kicks off in Austin on January 14th, 2026.
The domestic competition series will be covered across NBC Sports platforms.
US swimming icon Katie Ledecky is back on top, earning her 22nd world title with a gold medal-winning 1,500-meter freestyle performance at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships on Tuesday.
Finishing with a time of 15:26.44, Ledecky now owns 25 of the top 26 times in the event's history and holds six World Aquatics Championships titles at that distance.
"Each one has meaning, and I love every race that I've had at Worlds over the years," the 28-year-old swimming star told broadcasters following her Tuesday victory.
That 22nd title brought Ledecky's combined Worlds total to an overall 28 medals, lifting the star to second on the all-time most decorated list where she trails only retired US men's star Michael Phelps's 33 podium finishes.
Earlier in the week, the Team USA standout took bronze in the 400-meter freestyle, coming in third behind China's silver-medalist Li Bingjie and Canadian sensation Summer McIntosh, who won the race with a time of 3:56.26.
Gold medals have been hard to come by for Team USA at this year's World Championships.
Other than Ledecky's win and the 100-meter butterfly title snagged by Gretchen Walsh on Monday, the US women have struggled to claim gold medals as they push to recover from the acute gastroenteritis that hit several team members at their pre-meet training camp in Thailand.
That stomach bug inhibited multiple US swimmers from traveling with the team to the Singapore meet, and saw contenders like 100-meter butterfly Olympic gold medalist Torri Huske pull out of initial heats.
"We're taking it a day at a time," said Team USA head coach Greg Meehan about the impact of the illness. "Obviously, this is not how we thought the first few days of this competition would go. But I'm really proud of our team."
How to watch Ledecky at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships
The 2025 World Aquatics Championships runs through Sunday, and US star Ledecky has two events left to swim at the meet.
On Thursday, she'll compete in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay, before facing another showdown with rival McIntosh in the 800-meter freestyle on Saturday.
Preliminary heats kick off the night before at 10 PM ET, with finals seeing staggered starts beginning at 7 AM ET.
Live coverage of the meet airs on Peacock.
Star US distance swimmer Katie Ledecky is back to her old tricks, registering her fastest 1,500-meter freestyle in seven years — and the event's second-best time in history — at the 2025 TYR Pro Swim Series in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Wednesday.
The nine-time Olympic gold medalist finished the 30 pool lengths in 15:24.51, just missing the world-record 15:20.48 race time she posted in 2018.
Ledecky now holds the 1,500-meter freestyle's top 22 fastest times in women's swimming history — all of which would have won Wednesday's final race, where she defeated second-place finisher Jillian Cox — a University of Texas freshman — by a full 39 seconds.
Even more, Ledecky didn't slow down after her 1,500-meter performance posting her fastest 400-meter freestyle in nine years the very next day.
In the final lap of the race, the 28-year-old staged a comeback to pass Canadian teenage phenom and 2024 Olympic silver medalist Summer McIntosh and secure the win.
Her time of 3:56.81 just missed the US record of 3:56.46 that Ledecky previously claimed along with a gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
"I don't know if I ever thought I was going to be 3:56 again," Ledecky said in her post-race broadcast interview. "I'm just really happy with all the work that I've put in to get to this point."
How to watch Ledecky at the 2025 TYR Pro Swim Series
The 2025 TYR Pro Swim Series continues through Saturday, with Ledecky competing in Friday's 200-meter freestyle final prior to racing in the 800-meter freestyle on Saturday.
Both races will begin at 6 PM ET on their respective days.
Live coverage of the meet will stream on Peacock on Friday before shifting to the USA Swimming Network on Saturday.
After a bit of a sluggish start, Team USA surged in the final few days of Olympic swimming to hold rival Australia at bay and pick up the most swimming gold medals of any participating country.
The entire US swim team finished with eight overall golds, six of which were earned at least in part by a member of the women's team (one gold went to the mixed gender 4x100-meter medley relay).
Meanwhile, Team Australia capped their Olympic run with seven gold medals, though the overall total count swung more firmly in the US' favor at 28 to 18.
Team USA swimmers shine in imperfect Olympic meet
The meet was by no means perfect for Team USA, but they leave Paris with obvious bright spots and a few broken world records to boot.
Torri Huske emerged Paris's most decorated US women's swimmer. Along with her individual 100-meter butterfly gold, Huske anchored two gold medal relays, and tacked on two silver medals.
After getting the better of Australian standout Ariarne Titmus in the 800-meter freestyle, US icon Katie Ledecky leaved Paris with two individual golds, a solo bronze, and a relay silver. Plus, she became Team USA's most decorated Olympic women's sports athlete of all time.
In the end, former NCAA star Katie Douglass rounded out the impressive US trio with a gold in the 200-meter breaststroke to complement her two relay silvers.
Lastly, the final Olympic race gave the US a shining stamp on the Games, as the 4x100 medley relay earned a new world record on the way to the team's final gold medal.
McIntosh lays strong Olympic foundation
While the 2024 Games might be best remembered for the splashy US-Australia rivalry, they'll also live in history as Canadian teenager Summer McIntosh's thrilling Olympic debut.
In her first Olympics, the 17-year-old earned three individual gold medals and one silver, already staking her claim as a serious contender for the best all-around swimmer in the world.