Swimming: The crowd chant for Becky but get Ledecky

LONDON (Reuters) - The home fans were chanting 'Becky, Becky' but Katie Ledecky got there first.

Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington, the 800 meters freestyle world record holder and golden girl of British swimming after her surprise double gold haul in Beijing four years ago, surrendered her crown to the 15-year-old American.

In fact, it was more a case of Ledecky ripping it unceremoniously off her head with a performance that heralded the arrival of another prodigious talent from the other side of the Atlantic.

The girl from Bethesda, Maryland, led for all but one length of the pool and then swam inside Adlington's world record all the way to the final turn before settling for the second fastest time ever.

Adlington finished third and well beaten in her favorite distance.

Ledecky's time of eight minutes, 14.63 seconds was the fastest time this year, faster than the time set at the U.S. trials last month where she slashed five seconds off her best and led from start to finish.

It was also a U.S. record, shattering the mark of 8:16.22 set by 1988 and 1992 gold medalist Janet Evans that had stood since 1989.

So quick, indeed, that she was asked at a news conference when she eventually emerged from anti-doping about the suspicions that had swirled around Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen earlier in the competition.

Her entry on Wikipedia had already been defaced by an unknown hand.

She dismissed any such insinuation as 'totally false'.

"I've just been setting a lot of short term and long term goals," said the swimmer who will be a sophomore in high school when she returns home. "And working my butt off and just getting faster."

The youngest member of the entire 530 member U.S. team in London told how Michael Phelps, who has more Olympic gold medals (17) than she has years, and 17-year-old Missy Franklin had also spurred her on.

"It's amazing," she gasped. "Michael was the first Olympian I ever met when I was six (years old), right before I started swimming.

"So just to hear a good luck from him before the race was really cool and I just thought back to that and it really calmed me down and I was ready to swim my race."

Franklin, who won 200 backstroke gold on another triumphant evening for the U.S. swimmers, also wished her luck.

That meeting with Phelps, at the University of Maryland in 2003, came after the man who would be the greatest swimmer of all time had already made his debut as a 15-year-old at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

"We were walking back to our car after a final session and he was walking to his car along with some other athletes," she recalled of an occasion that had remained stamped on her mind despite her tender years.

"We got his autograph and he kept walking to his car with his iPod and then sort of waved at us."

(Editing by Greg Stutchbury)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/swimming-crowd-chant-becky-ledecky-224103328--spt.html

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