2024 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials Night 8: Big wins for Dressel, Ledecky, Douglass

The biggest names in American swimming took to the Lucas Oil Stadium pool on the penultimate night of the 2024 U.S. Olympic Swimming Team Trials presented by Lilly.

Caeleb Dressel, Kate Douglass, and Katie Ledecky were all in action, and all were victorious in their respective finals. They can all now set their sights on Paris.

Dressel aced the men's 100m butterfly final, Douglass completed her perfect Trials with a win in the women's 200m IM, and Ledecky was typically in a class of her own in the women's 800m freestyle, the event in which she first sprung onto the Olympic stage in 2012.

See below for event-by-event recaps, highlights and results from Indy.

Men's 100m butterfly final

Caeleb Dressel's Trials are officially over, and they ended with his most emphatic performance yet.

The seven-time Olympic gold medalist won the 100m butterfly final in 50.19 seconds. He'll go on to Paris to defend his Tokyo title.

After the race, satisfaction and relief.

"It's tough making it through the Trials. This truly is the hardest part," Dressel said of his emotional week, in which he also qualified for the 50m free and the 4x100m free relay. "I think I've felt every emotion that I'm capable of."

The second Olympic spot, in a surprise, went to 17-year-old Thomas Heilman, swimming in Lane 1. Heilman out-touched Dare Rose by four-hundredths to qualify for a second event for Paris.

Women's 50m freestyle semifinals

Women's 200m IM final

Though she had already qualified for three other events in Paris earlier in the week, Kate Douglass showed on Night 8 why the 200m IM remains her strongest event.

The 2023 and 2024 world champion won the final in 2:06.79 for a personal-best time and a U.S. Open record time, closing out a successful Trials that defied even her own expectations. Douglass not only qualified for, but won, each event she entered: the 100m freestyle, 200m breaststroke and 200m IM.

"I feel like the goal coming into this meet was to try to win all three events, but I didn't really think I was going to be able to achieve that. So I'm really happy I did," Douglass said.

She'll compete in Paris alongside her University of Virginia teammate and friend, Alex Walsh, who finished second in the final. Walsh, who competed in the same event in Tokyo, will now get to compete at an Olympics with her youngest sister, Gretchen, who qualified in the 100m butterfly and 4x100m free relay.

"I'm just happy that we can go [to the Olympics] together and live this dream that we've been dreaming for so long," Alex Walsh said.

Women's 800m freestyle final

It was never a matter of if Katie Ledecky would win the 800m free final, only whether she would eclipse Canadian Summer McIntosh's world-leading time of 8:11.39 while doing so.

She couldn't quite manage that, finishing in 8:14.12. But the important business, qualifying for Paris in a fifth event, was never in doubt. (Ledecky is likely to only swim four events in Paris, opting out of the 200m freestyle.)

Ledecky has won gold in the 800m free at the last three Olympics, but may face a legitimate threat from McIntosh in Paris.

Behind Ledecky, Paige Madden shaved nearly seven seconds off her personal best time to qualify for a third Olympic event, along with the 400m freestyle and 4x100m free relay.