American great Katie Ledecky has become the first female swimmer to win gold medals at four different Olympic Games, after retaining her title in the women’s 1500m freestyle in Paris. 

The 27-year-old swimming legend surged to victory in the event on Thursday morning (AEST) in a time of 15 minutes and 30.02 seconds, an Olympic record.

Ledecky’s incredible win was highlighted by an image of her touching the wall with no other swimmers on screen– showing Ledecky’s dominance in the competition.

“I was just really happy with the time, honestly,” Ledecky said afterwards. “My three swims prior to this, I kept feeling that the time was a lot slower than it felt. That was the first one that felt like it showed in the time. I’m really happy.”

“I just wanted to swim a time I could be really happy with, and that was the one. It’s never easy to win a gold medal. Just trying to soak in every moment of it.”

“My mind wandered a lot,” she said. “I was thinking about my teammates that I train with back home.”

“Three years ago in Tokyo I was repeating my grandmother’s names in my head. Today I kind of settled on the boys names, the boys in Florida that I train with every day.”

The 1500m swimming queen

Going into the 1500m event in Paris, it was known that Ledecky would more than likely win – most were just curious by how much she’d win.

Ledecky won her preliminary heat on Tuesday by more than half a lap ahead of the second place swimmer, Simona Quadarella of Italy. Before that, at the US trials last month, Ledecky won by 20 seconds over her closest competition.

Ledecky is widely regarded as the greatest female distance swimmer of all time. The only other people to have won gold at four Olympics are American male swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte.

This is Ledecky’s eighth career Olympic title, putting her on-par with American Thompson’s all-time record for most women’s swimming golds. Thursday’s medal in Paris was also Ledecky’s 12th Olympic medal of any colour, tying her with Thompson, Dara Torres and Natalie Coughlin for most ever Olympic medals by a female swimmer of any country.

Ledecky has also broken the world record on six different occasions at the 1500m distance, and her time is more than 18 seconds better than the next fastest female.