The loss for the 24-year-old Ledecky was not entirely unexpected, as Titmus, 20, has been gaining on her the past few years.

"We're really friendly and she said she couldn't have done it without me," Ledecky said.

Olympic trials, Ledecky’s qualifying time was an underwhelming 4:01.27, more than two seconds off her best time of the year, nearly five seconds slower than her world record of 3:56.46 and well behind the 3:56.90 Titmus swam at the Australian trials that were going on basically at the same time

Swimming in different heats in Sunday night’s preliminaries, Ledecky posted a qualifying time of 4:00.45