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The American Katie Ledecky after her world record
Photo: Frank Gunn / dpa
US swimmer Katie Ledecky smashed the short course world record in the 1500 meter freestyle at the Swimming World Cup in Toronto, Canada.
According to the World Swimming Association Fina, the 25-year-old swam in 15:08.24 minutes on Saturday and was almost ten seconds faster than the German Sarah Wellbrock at the previous record.
Wellbrock had set this up in 2019 at the German Short Course Championships under the name Köhler.
In 2021 she married Olympic swimming champion Florian Wellbrock.
Ledecky is currently hard to beat on the longer freestyle distances.
At the Swimming World Championships in Budapest in June, she won gold in the 400, 800 and 1500 meter freestyle.
The American triumphed over the two longest distances by a huge margin.
Ledecky has now won 14 individual gold medals at world championships.
No swimmer has ever won that many before her.
The Toronto start was her first ever over this distance on the short course.
German highlight by Elendt
Ledecky's dream time was the second fabulous world record over a long freestyle distance within a few days.
Only on Thursday did relay Olympic champion Li Bingjie beat Australia's Ariarne Titmus' 400-meter record by an incredible 2.62 seconds in 3:51.30 minutes at the Chinese short course championships.
Breaststroke swimmer Anna Elendt provided the highlight from a German perspective.
Over 100 meters, the runner-up world champion on the long track improved her German record, which was only a few hours old, to 1:04.07 minutes and was third in the victory of Lithuania's world record holder Ruta Meilutyte (1:02.95).
US student Elendt was 47 hundredths faster than her previous record from the heat (1:04.54), with which she had improved the 13-year-old state record of Caroline Ruhnau from Essen (1:04.78).
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