Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus of Australia set the world record in the women’s 400-meter freestyle, powering to the gold medal in 3 minutes, 55.38 seconds at the swimming world championships Sunday.
Titmus eclipsed the 3:56.08 set by Summer McIntosh earlier this year and finished 3.35 seconds ahead of silver medalist Katie Ledecky of the United States. New Zealand’s Erika Fairweather edged out McIntosh to grab the bronze, finishing 4.21 seconds behind Titmus.
The clash between the trio of Titmus, Ledecky and McIntosh had generated “race of the century” hype, 20 years after Ian Thorpe beat Pieter van den Hoogenband and Michael Phelps at the 2004 Athens Olympics. It was Titmus who laid down a marker for next year’s Paris Games, taking the lead 100 meters into the race and never looking back.
The 22-year-old Titmus has not lost a 400 freestyle race she has competed in for five years.
“I’ve put in a lot of work the past six weeks that I’ve been really happy with and took a lot away from trials,” Titmus said. “I swam the way I wanted to but knew I had enough time to turn that around and came here tonight and tried to be fearless.
“Summer and Katie are both class acts, and there’s hardly any faults in their racing. I knew the only way was to try…
