Team USA has its first Olympic gold medal in the pool after a dominating performance in the women's 400-meter freestyle from 19-year-old phenom Katie Ledecky, who still hasn't lost an major individual race since the 2012 London Games.
Ledecky cruised to an Olympic record in the preliminary heats Sunday morning with a time of 3 minutes, 58.71 seconds but held nothing back in her first individual finals swim as she crushed the eight-woman field with a new career-best time and world record of 3:56.46, a time she was confident she was going to better in finals.
"The 3:58 this morning felt really easy and I knew if I could just push the back half really hard I could make it happen tonight," Ledecky told NBC after the race.