RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Katie Ledecky is racing herself in the 400-meter freestyle.
Yulia Efimova and the U.S. men’s relay team are just glad to have a shot at a medal.
Coming back after anchoring the Americans to a relay silver on the opening day of swimming, Ledecky nearly broke her own world record in the preliminaries Sunday, setting herself up as the overwhelming favorite to capture her first gold medal of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Ledecky posted a time of 3 minutes, 58.71 seconds, actually backing off a bit on the closing lap to conserve energy for the late-night final. She just missed her mark of 3:58.37 set in 2014.
No one is even close to Ledecky. The next-fastest qualifier was Britain’s Jazz Carlin, who was more than 4 seconds behind.