Katie Ledecky extended her decade-long dominance of distance swimming by winning the women’s 800-meter freestyle at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore on Saturday. The 28-year-old American touched in 8 minutes 5.62 seconds to secure her seventh consecutive world title in the event and her 23rd world championship gold overall. Australia’s Lani Pallister pushed Ledecky to the wall, finishing 0.36 seconds behind in 8:05.98, while Canada’s Summer McIntosh claimed bronze in 8:07.29. The result halted McIntosh’s bid to equal Michael Phelps’s record of five individual titles at a single worlds and underscored the depth of the field, with all three swimmers breaking 8:10 for only the second time in history. Ledecky, who already captured gold in the 1,500 meters and bronze in the 400 meters earlier in the meet, is closing in on Phelps’s all-time mark of 26 world titles. Her victory came two months after she lowered her own world record to 8:04.12, and follows a rare defeat to McIntosh in 2024 that had signaled a potential changing of the guard. The American’s performance reaffirms her status as the sport’s pre-eminent distance swimmer ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, while Pallister’s personal-best silver and McIntosh’s continued podium presence set the stage for an intensifying rivalry in the event.