What do you get if you take two Olympic champions, a feisty teenager and put them together in a race where all three were world record holders at one point?
The perfect start to the swimming competition at an Olympic Games, and a major leap forward for women's sport.
Talk of the women’s 400m freestyle started long before the athletes came close to the pool at Paris La Defense Arena, which would be the stage for the final showdown. The characters in that play — Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, USA’s Katie Ledecky and Canada’s Summer McIntosh.
The three swimmers had created a real buzz over the past Olympic cycle, trading top places and even world records. Ledecky set the record on the way to winning the event at Rio 2016. Titmus trumped it in 2022 before McIntosh, then 16, surged to the scene with her own world record mark. Titmus claimed it back four months later, in July 2023.
The Olympic Games Paris 2024 would decide the true champion in what was being hailed as the "race of the century." The name was previously used in reference to the men's 200m freestyle at Athens 2004 where Australia's Ian Thorpe surged to gold ahead of the Netherlands' Pieter van den Hoogenband and USA's Michael Phelps.
This time it was women in the spotlight and, realising the significance of this, the three swimming talents were anxious to deliver on the high expectations.
"It’s fun racing the best in the world. It gets the best out of me, it gets the best out of them," Titmus said after the race. "I really hope all the hype lived up to the expectation. I really hope that I put on a good show tonight and everyone enjoyed it."
They did.
As Titmus touched the wall in a winning time of 3:57.49, she raised her fist in the air and the crowd roared its approval.
