(I heard one of the NBC commentators laughing partway through the race and saying, "I think I just saw a photographer zoom out." Because you HAD TO to get the other swimmers into the same shot!)
i need you all to understand how absolutely fucking monumental beating someone by SEVENTEEN seconds in a swim race is. normally, in olympic swimming, all the swimmers finish within the same few seconds. notice how in the event replay, all the other swimmers are roughly in a line during the race… (admittedly, swimmers tend to finish further apart from each other in longer distance races, but not by that much.) people spend months, years of their lives doing brutal training just trying to one-up other swimmers by a single second, because that can mean a win. every hundredth of a second matters.
and then. imagine being ledecky and finishing your olympic race, sitting and waiting on second place to arrive for seventeen entire seconds.
Some highlights from my family watching the Olympics in no particular order
"How tall is Simone Biles?" "Not very"
"Is Celine Dion like French royalty or something" "no but she should be"
"No I don't really want to watch men's gymnastics, not my thing" 5 minutes later "SPIN, STEVE!"
"Can... can he see the pommel horse?" "I don't think so"
"Whats Simone Biles husband's name again?" "She's married?"
"Ilona Maher is a national treasure and I'm going to marry her" "I thought you were straight?"
"Stephen Nedoroscik is so hot, and he can solve a rubik's cube in 9 seconds" "...why do you know that?"
"I've decided I can't marry Steve because I am also blind as a bat without my glasses and that would just set our kids up for failure" "I'm sure his girlfriend will be happy to hear that"
"Mom, if I got gay married to an Olympic gold medalist, how mad would you be?" "You can't marry Katie Ledecky she's taller than your father and 8 years older than you" "damn it"