WELCOME TO THE RACE OF THE GAMES

Olympics offers a quadrennial window into some of the best performers. At Paris, the women’s 400m freestyle will be one unmissable discipline. Four of the five fastest women in history in the event will go head to head. Outwardly, they, Olympic champs, world champs, current and a couple of former world record holders, have avoided the trash talk. Inwardly, the four have a burning desire to place their tanks on this event. Swaroop Swaminathan takes a magnifying glass

WHAT'S a GOAT to the current worldrecord holder? What's the current world-record holder to a future Hall of Famer? What's all of them to a dreamer?

The four the GOAT, the world-record holder, the future Hall of Famer and the dreamer ―will likely swim on the Opening night of the Paris Games. It has already been dubbed as the 'Race of the Century'.

As far as sporting hyperboles go, 'Race of the Century' is a decent starting point. It may be unoriginal but there's no doubting what it aims to convey. The Paris Games, like a few other preceding ones, will have its own version. The women's 400m freestyle. Katie Ledecky vs. Summer McIntosh vs. Ariarne Titmus vs. Erika Fairweather. All four have won multiple Worlds medals. Three of them, McIntosh, Titmus and Ledecky, have been at it for at least two years.

In 2023, Fairweather entered the chat. The then Kiwi teen won bronze ahead of McIntosh at the Worlds. In 2024, at a Worlds without any of Ledecky, McIntosh and Titmus, Fairweather won gold with a time of 3:59.44. Another swimmer going below the magical four-minute mark. With a time like that, she would be a favourite for gold in most Olympics. In Paris, she is the fourth favourite for first. So, basically, the woman who beats everybody (Titmus), against the woman (Ledecky) who generally beats everybody except the woman who beats everybody, versus the woman (McIntosh) who has shown that she can beat everybody, versus the woman (Fairweather) who could well defeat all of them, at least in the future.

Welcome, then, to what is likely already four of the most over-hyped minutes in the Games' recent history.

Just before the Rio Olympics, Ledecky, still a teen, was considered unbeatable. She was so ahead of the rest of the pack, that a piece in the New York Times began a feature like this. "The question," they had written, "is not whether Katie Ledecky will win. But by how much?"