Katie Ledecky Breaks Her 1500m Freestyle World Record

United States swimmer Katie Ledecky broke her own world record in the 1,500-meter freestyle at the world swimming championships by 2.23 seconds Tuesday, finishing in a time of 15 minutes, 25.48 seconds, according to the Associated Press.

Lauren Boyle of New Zealand finished second, while Boglarka Kapas of Hungary came in third.

Ledecky set the previous world-record mark in the preliminaries Monday. She also won the 1,500-meter freestyle at the previous world swimming championships in Barcelona two years ago, and she has already taken gold at the 400-meter swim at this year's world championships.

She has now set nine world records in her young career.

Ledecky hadn't even set out to break the world record in the preliminaries, but as she entered the final laps, she saw her friends and family waving her on as she was maintaining a world-record pace to that point, per Dave Sheinin of the Washington Post: “It didn’t even spur me on at all. I didn’t want to get up and race even harder because I felt if I just maintained the pace I was holding, maybe I could still get under [the world record]. And if I didn’t, I wasn’t really expecting it anyway.”

She was expecting it Tuesday, however, and she once again smashed her own mark. She didn't have too much time to enjoy the moment, however, as she had the 200-meter preliminaries about 20 minutes after her triumph.

Just 18, Ledecky will be the favorite at the event in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics and perhaps in a few Olympics beyond that as well. She is the undisputed star of female swimming in the United States at this point, and she has the potential to become one of the most decorated figures in her sport, period.