“The pool hurts today. Well, I am sore. My arms and legs feel like they are filled with cement.”Katie Ledecky had stepped up her training sessions with the goal of going to Paris 2024. And she succeeded. In June, she qualified for her fourth Olympics.
The fruits have been seen in an extraordinary way.
On Saturday, she won the gold medal in the 800m freestyle, equalling the number of women with the most gold medals in Olympic history, Soviet Larisa Latynina, who won nine titles in gymnastics.
With this victory, he joins Michael Phelps, the athlete with the most medals in Olympic history (28, including 23 gold), in the feat of having won four Olympic golds in a single swimming event.
The 800m freestyle is her favourite and most successful event, as she demonstrated in London, Rio and Tokyo, when she also won the championship.
On Wednesday he had won gold and set a New Olympic record in the 1,500m freestyle. Last Saturday, she won the bronze medal in the 400m freestyle. And on Thursday she won the silver medal with her teammates in the 4x200m relay.
The four medals in Paris bring her total to 14 in four Olympics, making her the woman with the most medals in the history of Olympic swimming.
Not only in the Olympics
But his dominance is not limited to the Olympic arena.
In July 2023, it became the swimmer with the most individual titles at world championships in history: 16, one more than Phelps.
At the World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Ledecky had won her sixth world title in the 800m, making her the first swimmer (men or women) to win six consecutive world golds in the same event.
In 2021, a now-retired Phelps attended the United States’ qualifying competitions for the Tokyo Olympics as a spectator.
He was thrilled to see Ledecky win the 400m freestyle.
“The best swimmer of our time.” That’s what he called her.
The numbers prevail
“I’m in the pool.
I’m always in the pool. Hours a day, almost every day, since I was a little girl.”
This is how the introduction to Ledecky’s autobiography begins, Just Add Water: My Swimming Lifepublished by Simon & Schuster. The first line of this article is from that book.
Although she started swimming when she was very young, her competitive career began when she was six years old.
Her mother, Mary, who swam for the University of New Mexico, was an inspiration. Her brother, Michael, was her partner in the water.
After an unstoppable career, there is a consensus: Ledecky is one of the best swimmers to ever competeThere are even those who consider it the best in history.
Ahead of Ledecky’s participation in Paris 2024, BBC Mundo spoke to journalist Philip Hersh, who has written about Olympic sports for the Chicago Tribune for 28 years and has covered 20 Olympics, eight of them in the summer.
“It is very difficult to compare athletes from different eras under conditions that were very different from each other,” he said.
The new generations of swimmers have benefited from opportunities and social changes that have allowed them to have longer careers than previous generations.
“However, when I start reading you some of her stats, you’ll see that if she’s not the greatest of all time, she’s certainly is the most decorated”.
Her 14 Olympic medals make her the most decorated American woman in the history of the Games.
She has 26 medals in world championships (21 of which are gold).
He told me that he set the world record three times in the 400m and In the 800m he broke the world record five times.
She holds the women’s world records for the 800m and 1,500m freestyle.
And the statistics go on and on.
“Katie’s numbers are so overwhelming that there is no doubt that, at least statistically, she is the greatest swimmer of all time.”
A teenager in London
At the 2008 Beijing Games, Rebecca Adlington She became the first British swimmer to win Olympic gold in 48 years.
She won both the 400m and 800m freestyle events.
In London 2012, she competed in the 800m against Ledecky, who I was 15 years old.
It was the American’s first Olympics and it was the only event she competed in. And she won.
Adlington, who was the favourite, came in third.
In 2013, Ledecky broke the British record for the 800m, which had been held for five years.
He did it when he was 16 years oldat the World Championships in Barcelona, when he stopped the clock at 8:13.86.
Someone who has a pleasant memory of that World Cup is Maya DiRado.
There, she won her first world championship medal, silver in the 400m individual medley.
As part of the United States team, she teamed up with Ledecky, who was competing in her first world championship.
DiRado evokes not only her friendly personality. “We ate peanut butter, candy and pasta together,” she told BBC Mundo shortly before the start of Paris 2024. “You looked as fresh as a cucumber”.
“And then she went out and won a record number of gold medals in all of her events.”
Teenager Ledecky won the 400m, 800m (record-breaking), 1,500m (record-breaking) freestyles and the 4x200m relay.
A star in Rio
Then came the preparation for her second Olympics: Rio 2016.
DiRado said that at Olympic camp, training is often done separately: the men’s team on one side and the women’s team on the other.
But in 2016, He saw something he will never forget.
“Katie was doing her long distance series with the boys. And we’re not just talking about them being good college swimmers, we’re talking about them being the best long distance swimmers in the country.”
“You could see Katie coming up to them and sometimes, even beat them“That was really amazing to see and I don’t think it’s ever happened before.”
In Rio, DiRado won three individual medals (one gold, one silver and one bronze) and one gold alongside Ledecky in the 4x200m freestyle relay.
“That was the best moment of my swimming career: Being on a relay for Team USA was an absolute dream”, he said with a smile.
“I was very nervous. I was actually a lot more nervous than in any of my individual events because you feel like there is a lot more at stake.”
“In your individual events you want to perform well for yourself and for the team, but you also want to do the relay and that puts extra pressure on you.”
“It was a huge relief to know that I was swimming with Katie and that She would do the last leg. Having all the confidence in the world in our anchor swimmer took a lot of pressure off me. And Katie did that, we got the gold.”
“Really phenomenal”
But there is another unforgettable moment for DiRado and it also occurred in Rio.
“The night I won my gold medal in the 200m backstroke, Katie also had her 800m freestyle final. That race was probably the most impressive I have ever witnessed as a swimmer.”.
“It was like Katie had just summoned something supernatural. It was really phenomenal, that night was very special for me because I could turn around and see her.”
In total, Ledecky won five medals in Rio, three of them individual golds and, In Tokyo 2020, she won four medalsof which two were individual crowns.
He arrived in Paris at the age of 27.
DiRado asked me to imagine the intensity of the daily work required to go to the Games and, to that, add the pressure that this implies.
“She’s done it four times.”
“She’s so consistent and so good that it’s just what we expect from her, but when you stop and think about it, it’s really surprising.”
In fact, Ledecky reflects this in her autobiography. “I have probably swum more 800m and 1,500m freestyles than anyone else”.
“He has redefined what is possible”
You might think there’s a combination of factors that make Ledecky an extraordinary swimmer.
“You can start with the physical part, her nature: she’s tall, strong,” said DiRado, who explains that very few swimmers can do the gallop she achieves with her stroke.
It is a very powerful stroke that is combined with incredible speed.
However, it all comes down to one thing, in her opinion, “or at least what I think is most impressive about her: her mentality, she is just relentless”.
Hersh recalls that when he did a story for ESPN on Ledecky, published just before Rio 2016, he asked her then-coach Bruce Gemmell what made her a great swimmer.
“It’s not the physical,” he replied. “It’s between the ears. It’s the absolute, burning desire to improve and not being afraid of failure.”
For DiRado, Ledecky is synonymous with excellence and “commitment to hard work.” For example, she highlights her efforts to make “really grueling” series.
“His training is the toughest and he has been doing it at the highest level, for more than a decade”.
For Adlington, “the world of swimming is no stranger to legends with global superstars like Michael Phelps, but Katie Ledecky is something truly special.”
“Katie’s achievements are phenomenal. Her technique, her endurance and her determination are simply incredible. Katie has taken long distance freestyle to another level”, he told BBC Mundo before the Olympics.
“She has redefined what is possible in sport and given everyone a new benchmark to strive for,” said the swimmer who, after a successful career, announced her retirement in 2013.
Adaptation
Hersh also highlights the ability of Ledecky – who graduated in Psychology – “to adapt to any environment.”
For example, he has gone to every Olympics with n a different coach.
“Few athletes could adjust to changes like that so easily and continue to have the great success she has achieved.”
But there is something particularly inspiring about the swimmer, she says. “He has not been carried away by his success.”
Because of her journalistic work, she has spoken with her on several occasions, the first in 2015.
In another meeting, he spent three days with her and her family, then interviewed her at the United States qualifiers for the 2016 Olympics.
Despite having reasons for having a bloated ego, she is not at all conceited, she says.
“She is incredibly kind to children who come up to her for an autograph or to say hello.”
“She’s a superstar who certainly doesn’t act like one”.
“The best version of me”
Despite the years that have passed and the triumphs achieved, Ledecky admits that swimming has not stopped being hard.
“Becoming a successful athlete does not come without the help of many people,” he wrote.
“The Olympic medals, the world records, those are incredible achievements. But I am more satisfied with what swimming has done for me. Because of how that activity has shaped the best version of me.”
Years ago, he said, “I try not to pay attention to all the attention.”
Whatever happened in Paris, Ledecky was going to remain a magnet for swimming pundits and non-swimmers alike.
“His ability to stay grounded is quite remarkable,” Hersh notes.
And it is now a fact that Katie Ledecky is at the top of the Olympus of sports legends.
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