The last time that Katie Ledecky was beaten in a 1,500-meter freestyle event was a regional swim meet in Maryland 14 years ago. “There’s not, like, a ton of details that I can recall,” Pawlowicz said recently. “It was just a midsummer gauge type of meet to see where you’re at. Nothing special or crazy about it.”The mile, as the 1,500 freestyle is colloquially known, is generally considered the sport’s most grueling event. Even Ledecky, 27, who loves distance racing and has built a career around it, called it “fully masochistic” in her recently published memoir.

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Persons: Katie Ledecky, Ledecky, Kaitlin Pawlowicz, “ There’s, ” Pawlowicz Locations: Maryland