“Normally I think a lot of people have to be superdominant, but Katie wants other U.S. girls to be up there on the podium with her,” Smith said. “She wants challenges. She’s always setting high goals for herself. I think it’s amazing you can want someone who’s racing you to go low.”

Ledecky’s coach, Bruce Gemmell, isn’t surprised. “Her biggest internal motivator is getting better, it’s raising the bar,” he said about Ledecky. “It’s not winning an Olympic medal, it isn’t setting a world record, it wasn’t becoming the best in the world. It’s about setting goals and going after them.”

Where does Ledecky go from here? To Stanford, to begin her freshman year, which she put off to train for the Meyer milestone.

Her growing legion of admirers includes Kevin Durant, who asked to take a photograph with her after her 200 freestyle victory, and the Olympian with the most medals of all, Michael Phelps.