Swimming: “Race of the century” lives up to hype as Ariarne Titmus wins Olympic 400m freestyle gold over former world record holders

The 17-year-old McIntosh, the darling and face of Team Canada, was second to Titmus throughout the race and finished in 3:58.37 to claim her first Olympic medal. The teenager had come close with a fourth place in the same race at Tokyo 2020 at the age of 14.

“Going into tonight I really just wanted to put my best foot forward and race as hard as I could,” McIntosh said. “Any time I get to race either of those girls it’s an amazing opportunity and I learn so much. They push me to be better and make me put my best foot forward, so it was definitely a good race.”

While McIntosh was a veritable threat from the start, Rio 2016 champion Ledecky needed 200m to find her stride.

She trailed both her Australian and Canadian rivals, as well as intermittently Australia’s Erika Fairweather and then USA’s Paige Madden, before getting into medal position at the 250m mark. Still far behind the two leaders, however, Ledecky only managed a 4:00.86 to complete her set of 400m freestyle medals with a bronze — her first bronze in an illustrious Olympic career that now counts 11 medals.

Climbing atop the Eiffel Tower-themed podium, it was clear Ledecky had been hoping for a different result, but the apparent gloom immediately faded away as she was handed a phone to take a selfie of her and her two biggest rivals with their medals.

“They told us before we walked out that they were going to hand us this phone,” the USA swimmer later joked. “I guess they’re doing this for all the medal ceremonies and I was joking with them [that] ‘you’re going to get the oldest person a phone to figure out how to open it up and click the right button?’ But hopefully the photo turned out.”

If it did not, with two more individual races to go, Ledecky still has plenty of chances to snap a shot worthy to be called the “selfie of the century.”