It was billed as the race of the century, a clash between three world record-holders and future hall of famers. But on this boisterous night in Paris, hype and reality never quite brushed cheeks. Once again the Australian they call the Terminator was left standing at the end, the immortal and the indestructible, as she defended her Olympic 400m freestyle title.
The first thing Ariarne Titmus did after her victory was to hug the brilliant 17-year-old Canadian Summer McIntosh, who always threatened but never quite delivered. Then it was the turn of the American Katie Ledecky, by common consent the greatest female swimmer of them all. There was respect there. Appreciation, too. But they knew Titmus had been too good again.
“I probably felt the pressure for this race more than anything in my life, to be honest,” Titmus said. “I’m definitely good at handling the pressure, but I’ve definitely felt it.”
How does she keep delivering? Her family put it down to the fact she was born with her umbilical cord around her neck, and believe her fight for survival made her who she is. As her father, Steve, puts it: “It’s almost as if from that point she was never going to give up.” There is a lot of talk these days about manifestation. Titmus could be the concept’s poster child.
In truth, it was a good race but not a great one. The big three quickly became the tenacious two, as Ledecky failed to keep up with the searing pace set by Titmus and McIntosh.
Until halfway there was almost nothing in it. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, Titmus applied the squeeze and pulled away to win in 3min 57.49sec, with McIntosh taking silver in 3:58.37 and Ledecky bronze in 4:00.86.
“But it’s fun racing the best in the world,” Titmus said. “It gets the best out of me; it gets the best out of them. I really hope all the hype lived up to the expectation. I really hope that I put on a good show tonight and everyone enjoyed it.”
Thankfully, this gladiatorial contest had a venue fit for the occasion – a welcome relief after the necessarily empty swimming stadium at the Tokyo Games. Over the past few weeks, organisers have transformed this indoor rugby stadium at La Défense, where Racing 92 play their home games, into an extraordinary swimming arena.
It is a remarkable feat of engineering, with two pools, each filled with 2.5m litres of water, and 15,000 seats.
However, it is clearly missing one crucial ingredient: lightning speed. The reason, most experts suspect, is because the pools are only 2.30m deep. When it comes to fast times a simple logic tends to apply: the deeper the pool, the quicker they tend to be.
That probably explains why Titmus’s winning time was two seconds outside her world record. This night wasn’t about records, though, but legacy. As she put it: “The Olympics are different. It’s not like anything else. It’s not about how fast you go. It’s about getting your hand on the wall first. So I’m really happy to have done that tonight.”
She added: “I started to feel it in the last hundred. But I left everything out there. It’s probably not the time I was capable of, but living in the village makes it hard for high performance. It’s about who can keep it together in the mind.”
For Ledecky, this night had its compensations. This was her eighth individual medal, tying Carl Lewis and Ray Ewry. In fact Michael Phelps, with 16, is the only American with more individual Olympic medals in any sport.
There were no medals for Britain on the first day of the swimming competition but Team GB’s Adam Peaty and China’s Qin Haiyang both did their part in setting up a spicy 100m breaststroke showdown on Sunday by winning their respective semi-finals.
Peaty, who is trying to become the first swimmer to win three gold medals at the distance, will feel that he made a quiet statement of intent as he qualified fastest in 58.86sec, beating the American world champion, Nic Fink, by 0.30.
While Qin’s time of 58.93 was only a smidgeon behind, Peaty believes he can go faster. “There’s still a lot to work on technically,” he said. “It is really tough on that back end. I know this field has been a bit slower, all respect due.
This is the way the Olympics work. It ain’t about a time, here it is about the races.”
He added, pointing at the pool: “This sport is so testing, so testing, but you can’t beat that. I’m loving it again, so what else can you add except a chocolate cake?”
Earlier in the night, Lukas Märtens won the men’s 400m freestyle – and, in doing so, became the first German to claim an Olympic title since the Albatross, Michael Gross, in Seoul in 1988.
The first session closed with another gold medal for Australia in the penultimate event, the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay, in an Olympic record, with the US second and China third. Britain, however, finished sixth nearly seven seconds back.
Chants of “U–S-A! U–S-A!” then rang around the arena as the Americans won the men’s 4x100m freestyle gold in 3:09.28, ahead of Australia and Italy, with Team GB fifth.
