Olympic Swimming 2016: Women's 400M Freestyle Medal Winners, Times and Results

Katie Ledecky shattered her own world record in the 400-meter freestyle to earn her first gold medal of the 2016 Summer Olympics. 

The 19-year-old had never lost in an individual final of a major international competition and didn't start now, torching the field with a time of three minutes, 56.46 seconds. This was about five seconds better than anyone else in the field.

Jazz Carlin of Great Britain came through with a solid second-place showing, just ahead of American Leah Smith in third place.

Medal	Swimmer	Country	Time
Gold	Katie Ledecky	United States	3:56.46
Silver	Jazz Carlin	Great Britain	4:01.23
Bronze	Leah Smith	United States	4:01.92

Ledecky is known for her ability to maintain her pace throughout longer competitions, and this race was no different. The American was the first to the wall at the end of the first lap and led by a full body length by the 100-meter mark.

From there, it was clearly only a race for second place for her competition.

Pat Forde of Yahoo Sports had high praise for the eventual winner:

Nicole Auerbach of USA Today provided a look at just how big of a blowout it ended up being when Ledecky touched the wall:

Ledecky actually had a chance to set a new record during the preliminaries but eased up at the end to fall just off the pace.

"I think my last stroke was a little lackadaisical, so I shouldn’t have done that," Ledecky said after her qualifying race, per Nathan Fenno of the Los Angeles Times. "But whatever. I think I’ll be fine tonight."

She clearly knew what she was doing while coming through with one of the more dominant effort so far in Rio.

ESPN's Paul Carr put the final margin in perspective:

This is the second career gold medal for Ledecky after a surprise win in the 2012 games at just 15 years old. Since then, the American has become one of the biggest stars in the sport, winning five gold medals at the 2015 world championships and setting a plethora of world records.

She also earned a silver medal Saturday night as part of the United States' 4x100-meter relay team to kick off her campaign at Rio.

As the favorite in the 200- and 800-meter freestyle events, Ledecky will have a few more chances to add to her resume before the end of the week. With the additional possibility of more relay events, this has the potential to become one of the best individual performances in Olympic history.

Carlin set an impressive time of 4:01.23 to get second place, but she was clearly outmatched along with the rest of the field.

Smith also has to be proud of her performance while ending in third place after posting the third-best time in qualifying. She was right on Ledecky's heels during the U.S. trials to earn her spot on the team and continued to get better.

Smith will also compete in the 800-meter freestyle race later this week.

Follow Rob Goldberg on Twitter for year-round sports analysis.