Australian Lani Pallister is the first swimmer to beat Katie Ledecky in an 800m freestyle at a major meet, ending Ledecky’s streak at 13 international championship gold medals dating to 2012.
Pallister clocked 8 minutes, 6.10 seconds at the Pan Pacific Championships, beating Ledecky by 1.16 seconds in Irvine, California. Pallister took the lead from the start and never relinquished it.
Ledecky put a scare into Pallister late in the race, outsplitting her by seven tenths from 700 meters to 750 meters and cutting the lead to 94 hundredths.
“I saw her coming on the 15th 50 (between 700 and 750 meters), and I was like, holy s—-,” Pallister said.
PAN PACIFIC CHAMPIONSHIPS: Results
Ledecky said it was her best swim of the meet.
“So I’m actually pretty happy with it,” she said. “If I was going to get second tonight, I wanted to make it a good one.”
Pallister, a 24-year-old who saved Ledecky’s autograph from 2014, said the time leading up to the race was the most nervous she has ever felt. But she built to this moment.
At the 2025 Worlds, she took silver behind Ledecky by 36 hundredths in the closest championship 800m free of Ledecky’s career.
At these Pan Pacs, Pallister was 2.53 seconds behind Ledecky in the 1500m free — the closest anybody has been to Ledecky in a championship 1500m in 13 years — then beat Ledecky for the first time in any distance in the 400m free on Friday night.
📹 Boxall cam of THAT epic win.
— Australian Dolphins Swim Team (@DolphinsAUS) August 16, 2026
On the final night of 2026 Pan Pacs, Lani Pallister disrupted Katie Ledecky’s decade-long dominance of the women’s 800m freestyle in front of an American home crowd. 💥💪🐬
Two mighty competitors. One epic race to remember. pic.twitter.com/2eCJBzDoLQ
Ledecky won the 800m free at the 2012 Olympics at age 15, then rattled off three more Olympic golds in the event, plus seven world titles and two Pan Pacific titles.
Pan Pacs, a meet for non-European swimmers, is the biggest competition of 2026 for swimmers from the U.S. and Australia.
“First of all, Katie’s such a dominant force, and I think it’s real important we give her a big round of a hand,” Pallister said on the NBC Sports broadcast. “Without her, we wouldn’t have women’s distance swimming in the place where it is at the moment. To be part of that story at the moment, pretty much all because we get to chase Katie.”
Ledecky’s only other 800m free defeat in the last 16 years came to Canadian Summer McIntosh at a small Florida meet in February 2024.
At the 2028 Olympics, the women’s 800m free is the last individual event of the Games. It is a chance for Ledecky to become the second athlete to win the same individual Olympic event five times (after Cuban wrestler Mijain Lopez), but now it’s looking like it could be the toughest Olympic 800m of her career.
“If it’s a year to have a not-so-good meet, this is the year to have it,” she said. “I’m really excited about the next two years. I can reflect over the next couple weeks about where I can be better. I think I got a lot of good data from this meet and the whole year. It’s been a really great stretch for me since May 2025.”
Pan Pacs highlights air Sunday at 2 p.m. ET on NBC.
In other events Saturday, Kate Douglass broke the 50m freestyle world record in the prelims and final, plus anchored the U.S. women’s 4x100m medley relay to gold and took silver in the 200m breaststroke. More on Douglass’ historic day here.
In that medley relay, Gretchen Walsh posted the fastest butterfly split in history — 54.78, beating her own 54.98 from the 2025 Worlds.
China’s Yu Yiting upset Olympic gold medalist and world record holder Summer McIntosh in the 200m individual medley, edging the 19-year-old Canadian by two hundredths.
McIntosh, who was disappointed with some of her swims at this meet, finished the week with one win (400m individual medley) in her four individual events, three of which she won at the 2025 World Championships.
McIntosh’s coach since last summer, Bob Bowman, said going into the meet that he was still learning how to train McIntosh, noting this was the first taper meet of their working relationship.
Australian Sam Short won the 1500m free to complete a sweep of the 400m, 800m and 1500m frees, just as he did at the Commonwealth Games in late July.
Before this summer, the last man to sweep those three events at a major international meet was China’s Sun Yang at the 2013 Worlds.
NBC Sports’ Ardynne Fleitz contributed to this report from Irvine.
