2016 Olympic swimming results: Katie Ledecky rules again, Michael Phelps adds a silver medal to his haul

Katie Ledecky owns the Rio pool, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. She dominated once again to win the gold medal in the women’s 800m freestyle in world record time, finishing in 8:04.79. She won by a ludicrous 11 seconds over silver, stealing the show one more time in Rio on a thrilling night in the water as swimming capped its eighth day.

The 800m freestyle is Ledecky’s best event, and she totally owns it. Ledecky has had the world record in the race since Aug. 3, 2013, and has reset the record four times since, going from 8:13.86 to her nearly 10-second improvement on Friday.

Watching her compete in the 800m was nearly comical, as there was absolutely no competition even halfway through the race. When Ledecky finished the race, there was barely a single swimmer even in sight of the 19-year-old phenom.

The only race was Ledecky against the world record line superimposed on the pool by NBC -- her own record, mind you. She broke it by nearly two seconds.

The medal is Ledecky’s fifth of the Games, with four golds plus a silver medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay. She’s incredible, clearly one of the greatest swimmers ever, and scariest of all, she can keep doing this for years to come.

Phelps had gold medal finishes in his first four races, but came up a little short in the men’s 100m butterfly on Friday. Singapore’s Joseph Schooling, who had also beaten him in the heat, topped Phelps and set an Olympic record while he was at it. The 21-year-old Schooling has come a long way since this photo he took with Phelps in 2008.

Phelps finished in a three-way tie for second place at exactly 51.14 seconds, sharing the silver medal with South Africa’s Chad le Clos and Hungary’s László Cseh. Here’s what the slightly awkward medal ceremony looked like.

Phelps has one final race on Saturday, the 4x100m medley relay. And Schooling can now forever say he beat the greatest swimmer and the best Olympian of all time for a medal.

At 35, American Anthony Ervin became the oldest male swimmer to win a gold medal in the Olympics. Ervin had won the gold in the 2000 Sydney Olympics in the men’s 50-meter freestyle, and 16 years later he once again won the same event at Rio on Friday.

Ervin finished with a time of 21.40 seconds, topping silver medalist Florent Manaudou of France by literally a hundredth of a second. Ervin’s United States co-captain Nathan Adrian finished with bronze with a time of 21.49 seconds.

Madeline Dirado’s winning performance in the women’s 200-meter backstroke was the race that began a dominant night for the United States in the pool. Dirado’s win somehow might have been the most miraculous of them all, too.

Trailing until the very last stroke, Dirado’s last-second surge saw her beat gold medal favorite Katinka Hosszú of Hungary with a time of 2:05.99, just 0.06 seconds ahead of Hosszú.

In total, the United States took three of the four gold medals on Friday, plus a silver and a bronze. For the swimming tournament, American swimmers have won 14 of the 29 available gold medals, nearly half, and 29 of the 86 total medals, more than a third.

Phelps dominates the pool, Ledecky is carrying on his tradition and the rest of the United States is racking up hardware too.