It was billed as the race of the century. And for once hype and reality danced mightily close together. But, as so often in the past, the Australian they called the Terminator was left standing at the end, immortal and indestructible, an Olympic champion once again.
Rarely do you get three world record holders, all hovering close to their prime, in the same Olympic final. But this is what we had in the women’s 400m freestyle title which had them together, side by side, focused only on gold.
The favourite, Ariarne Titmus, the reigning Olympic champion and world record holder in this event, in lane four. Canada’s 17-year-old superstar Summer McIntosh, the coming force, in five. And Katie Ledecky, by common consent, the greatest female swimmer of them all, in six. However three became two, as Ledecky failed to keep up with the searing pace set by Titmus and McIntosh.
But until halfway there was almost nothing in it. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, Titmus applied the squeeze.
With 250m she had a noticeable lead. By 300m it looked like a gold medal-winning one. And so it proved as she came home in 3min 57.49sec, with McIntosh taking silver in 3:58.37 and Ledecky claiming bronze in 4:00.86.
“I probably felt the pressure for this race more than anything in my life to be honest,” Titmus admitted. “I’m definitely good at handling the pressure, but I’ve definitely felt it.
“But it’s fun racing the best in the world,” she added. “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.”
Titmus’s story loses nothing in its retelling. She was born with her umbilical cord around her neck, and her family believes that her fight for survival in those early hours when her life was on the line made her who she is 23 years later. As her father put it on the eve of these Olympics: “We really believe that first hour set up her mindset for life. It’s almost as if from that point she was never going to give up.’’
Thankfully this gladiatorial contest also had a venue fit for the occasion. Over the last 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 2.5 million litres of water, and 15,000 seats.
However it is missing one crucial ingredient: lightning speed. The reason, most suspect, is because the depth of the pools are 2.30m whereas quicker pools tend to be three metres deep. But this wasn’t about fast times but strong spirits.
As Titmus put it afterwards. “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.”
“I started to feel it in the last hundred,” she added. “But I left everything out there, I gave it everything I could. 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.
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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 set up 100m breaststroke showdown nicely by winning their respective semi-finals.
Peaty, who is bidding 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 champ Nic Fink into second by 0.30sec.
And while Qin’s time of 58.93 was only a smidgeon behind, Peaty believes he can get even faster in the final if he can better hone his stroke. “There’s a lot to work on still technically,” he admitted. “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.”
“This sport is so testing, so testing, but you can’t beat that,” he said, pointing. I’m loving it again, so what else can you add except a chocolate cake?”
Earlier in the night, Lukas Märtens won the first swimming gold medal of these Games in the 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, as they beat the United States in an Olympic record of 3.28.92 with China third. Britain, however, could only finish sixth nearly seven seconds back.
The chants of “US-A! US-A!” then rang around the arena as the Americans won the men’s event with gold in 3:09.28, ahead of Australia and Italy with Team GB fifth.