Fina World Championships 2013: Ledecky sets new World Record in 1500m freestyle

RENANG, The more than ten thousand fans were treated to an evening of great emotions in Palau Sant Jordi. Some highlights were Ledecky´s new World Record, Lochte´s failure to make the podium, Missy Franklin´s first gold medal in Barcelona, and much more

This was definitely a great day for US swimming, as Missy Franklin, Katie Ledecky and Matt Grevers won three out of the five finals for their country.

The evening session began with the 200m freestyle race, where current Olympic champion Yannick Agnel won his first individual world championship gold thanks to an impressive 1:44.20, that left the silver medal for Conor Dwyer, from the USA, and the bronze for Russian swimmer Danila Izotov.

Expectations around Ryan Lochte were high, however, this was one of those races that he just wants to forget, as he said: "It wasn´t my night. But I have to put it behind because I still have many races to swim".

Later on, during the second final, it was Missy Franklin who took the gold in the 100m backstroke final, while Seebohm, from Australia, was second, and Japan´s Aya Terakawa was third, repeating the same podium from the last Olympic final.

An hour and ten minutes after winning that gold, Franklin came back to the pool to race the second heat of the semifinals of the 200m freestyle event. This time she finished in second place behind Federica Pellegrini.

It was Katie Ledecky, from the USA, who had the best performance of the evening and the greatest performance ever in the women´s 1500m freestyle by breaking the oldest World Record in long course swimming (from 2007, posted by Kate Ziegler). At the same time, Ledecky became the youngest winner of this event in the history of the FINA World Championships at the age of 16 years and 135 days, leaving behind her fellow countrywoman and now former world record holder Kate Ziegler (she set the WR in 2007 by swimming a 15:42.54). She had won this same race at the age of 17 years and 29 days when she did it for the first time, in 2005.

Ledecky´s challenge during the race was Denmark´s Lotte Friis, who suffered the sprint made by new female swimming sensation in the last one hundred, to finally finish in second place. Thanks to her silver, Friis became the first woman to win a medal in this discipline at three consecutive World Championships, after her silver from 2009 and her gold from 2011.

The second men´s final of the evening featured current Olympic champion Matt Grevers and David Plummer, who got together the first 1-2 for the United States in these World Championships and won medals number 399 and 400 for the USA in their long course world championships history.

On the last final of this session it was young Lithuanian star Ruta Meilutyte who won the gold medal in the 100m breaststroke event by swimming a 1:04.42, close to the World Record (1:04.35) that she herself set 24 hours ago, during the semifinals. Her gold was the 500th gold medal in the history of long course swimming World Championships, as well as the first gold medal ever for Lithuania at swimming World Championships.

Meilutyte also became the youngest woman to win both an Olympic and a world championship medal, and keeps showing that she is one of the brightest stars of female swimming along with Ledecky and Franklin.