Katie Ledecky is better than Mary Cain etc.

If Katie Ledecky isn't running under 4:10 for 1500m then she's not better than any of them.

Would be more impressed if she was winning the 100 free. 1500 free is the ultramarathon of swimming...bit of a joke.

country club sports like swimming, golf, and tennis aren't athletics!

where is that winter olympics troll when you need him...gravity sports don't count either.

Yes, she is a much better swimmer than Mary Cain. Any other wild predictions you'd like to make?

Yes, just like the 1500m is in track compared to the 100m. Everyone knows it is all in the sprints. How many people know who Usain Bolt is? How many people know who Bekele is?

kipwin wrote:

Would be more impressed if she was winning the 100 free. 1500 free is the ultramarathon of swimming...bit of a joke.

In the ultra marathon 1500, she went through 800m in 8:16 under the non Ledecky 800m American record of 8:17 set in 1988.

You might think of that as Rupp running the non-Rupp 10,000m American record of say 26:58 then finishing the marathon in World record time.

The point is that Ledecky is setting world records now. Yes, swimmers usually peak much sooner than runners in their careers, but Ledecky's ability is incredible. By the time she actually peaks in her career, show will likely have lowered the world records in the 800 and 1500 many times.

I don't think swimming belongs in this category. Golf and tennis usually require a lot of money and the leading young athletes in the sports tend to come from affluent families.County clubs may well have outdoor pools around which the wealthy lounge, but the majority of successful swimmers still come from local school or community indoor pools in which they swim innumerable lengths at ridiculously early hours of the day.

Bring Back the 880 wrote:

country club sports like swimming, golf, and tennis aren't athletics!

where is that winter olympics troll when you need him...gravity sports don't count either.

The 1500 in swimming is more like the 5K. And Katie is incredible. But I'm not really sure you can compare prodigies across sports.

Er... wrote:

I don't think swimming belongs in this category. Golf and tennis usually require a lot of money and the leading young athletes in the sports tend to come from affluent families.

County clubs may well have outdoor pools around which the wealthy lounge, but the majority of successful swimmers still come from local school or community indoor pools in which they swim innumerable lengths at ridiculously early hours of the day.

Bring Back the 880 wrote:

country club sports like swimming, golf, and tennis aren't athletics!

where is that winter olympics troll when you need him...gravity sports don't count either.

The majority of successful swimmers come from the top clubs. Top clubs are extremely expensive because you have to pay for both pool time and coaching. It is definitely a wealthy sport. My club for example cost about $4K/year growing up. We swam at Brown and Harvard. It was the pool time and coaching we had to pay so much for. Mostly pool time.

kipwin wrote:

Would be more impressed if she was winning the 100 free. 1500 free is the ultramarathon of swimming...bit of a joke.

No, the kinds of 10-20 mile open-water swims my wife does are the ultramarathons of swimming.

The 1500m is swum at roughly 1 minute / 100m [little faster for guys, little slower for gals], so the pool 1500m is a pretty similar event to the track 5000m.

I have no strong opinion about whether Ledecky is "better" than Cain in some absolute sense, but Ledecky is certainly much better than Cain relative to competition in her own sport. And if Ladecky keeps swimming well, she will get much more air time in Rio than Cain no matter how well Cain runs. And of course Missy Franklin will get more air time still.

p.s. Ledecky is world class at all the freestyle events from 100m - 1500m. Her PRs are:

100 m freestyle 55.22 2014 Mesa Grand Prix April 24, 2014

200 m freestyle 1:56.27 2014 Mesa Grand Prix April 25, 2014

400 m freestyle 3:59.82 2013 World Aquatics Championships July 28, 2013 AM, NR

800 m freestyle 8:13.86 2013 World Aquatics Championships August 3, 2013 WR

1500 m freestyle 15:34.23 TWST Senior Invitational June 19, 2014 WR

Yes, Ledecky is amazing. Starting out early, in clubs, the 1500 is the shaft race that nobody wants to do. The person with the most heart is assigned to race it.

When it gets more serious, the competition in the 1500 really is not as good as it is in the shorter events--however, that doesn't diminish Ledecky's greatness at all, considering what she has done.

There is that 800 split in the 1500 race, then there is her ability to win at 400-up. At 2013 FINA world's, she won the 400, 800, and 1500 free, and was part of the gold medal 800 free relay.

BTW the 800 was a WR, the 400 an AR and second-fastest time ever behind Pellegrini's techsuit WR, and the 1500 a WR. For you nonswimmers, that is unbelievable.

Yes the distance stroke is different than the sprint stroke, but she has proved herself over 200m in relays. If the schedule allowed, there is little doubt that she could be at or near the top of the 200 world as well. That is phenomenal range. It's like having WR's in the 5k, 10k, and marathon, and being fast enough at 400 to be on the world gold medal 4x4 relay. Are you kidding me? The only thing she would get beaten at handily would be the 100 and 50, which are sprint territory.

She is better at swimming than Cain, et al will EVER be at running, relative to the competition, both current and historic.

Again, her WR's were done without the speedsuit.

I think you'll continue to find yourself a controversial figure around here should you chose to clutter threads needlessly with things like "evidence" and "facts." How else are those of us who know nothing about a subject going to be able to continue grinding the axes of our ungrounded, baseless positions?!?!

xenonscreams wrote:

The majority of successful swimmers come from the top clubs. Top clubs are extremely expensive because you have to pay for both pool time and coaching. It is definitely a wealthy sport. My club for example cost about $4K/year growing up. We swam at Brown and Harvard. It was the pool time and coaching we had to pay so much for. Mostly pool time.

xenonscreams wrote:

Er... wrote:

I don't think swimming belongs in this category. Golf and tennis usually require a lot of money and the leading young athletes in the sports tend to come from affluent families.

County clubs may well have outdoor pools around which the wealthy lounge, but the majority of successful swimmers still come from local school or community indoor pools in which they swim innumerable lengths at ridiculously early hours of the day.

The majority of successful swimmers come from the top clubs. Top clubs are extremely expensive because you have to pay for both pool time and coaching. It is definitely a wealthy sport. My club for example cost about $4K/year growing up. We swam at Brown and Harvard. It was the pool time and coaching we had to pay so much for. Mostly pool time.

Different clubs are different. Here in NYC there's been a real effort to identify and develop promising young swimmers from backgrounds not traditionally identified with swimming. See

for a particularly striking example. The Swim for the Future program that got Lia started on her way to world-class swimming and Stanford was one of the good things that got started as a response to the tragedy of 9/11.

dc wonk wrote:

It's great to see the records and times being set by the outstanding female HS runners like Cain, Efraimson, etc., but swimmer Katie Ledecky is setting world records in one of the toughest events (the 1,500 free) and she is a rising senior in HS:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/olympic-gold-medalist-katie-ledecky-shatters-own-world-record-in-1500-meters/2014/06/19/5bbe7a7a-f809-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

Maybe Ledecky should be recruited to run! Actually, she will dominate the 800 and 1,500 swimming for the foreseeable future. Great performances!

She is pretty incredible, especially swimming great times in what track folks call all comer meets. Although Ledecky is very good at shorter distances as well. The swim 1500 is almost a nitch event in a somewhat nitch sport; the 1500 has the lowest level of participation of all swim events, whereas Mary Cain participates in one of T&F's most popular events and in one the world's most popular sports. Also, in T&F at age 17 Mary Cain is just starting her career, whereas Ledecky is perhaps in the prime of her career.

With that said, Ledecky is pretty incredible, especially how aggressively she competes.

No, it would be like being a world class 1500m runner who's also world class at the 800m and the 5000m. MANY top male 1500m swimmers are world class at everything down to 200m with pretty decent 100m speed as well. And the 4x200m relay would be analogous to the 4x800m in track, not the 4x400m, which would correspond to the 4x100m in swimming [a relay Ledecky might be able to make if she trained primarily for the 100m, but not clear.]

Ledecky's core events are the 400m free and the 800m free, which are as well contested as any women's events in swimming. She also holds the WR for the 1500m free, but because that event isn't on the Olympic program for women, that event is less of a focus for any top female swimmer, Ledecky included.

dkny64 wrote:

MANY top male 1500m swimmers are world class at everything down to 200m with pretty decent 100m speed as well.

I guess it depends on your definition of 'world class' and 'many.'

Who outside of Sun Yang and Park Tae Hwan would fit this description? I doubt besides those two you could find anyone with what I consider world class times in both. (Perhaps Hao Yun too??).