Twenty summers ago, it was a focal point of Atlanta’s Olympic Games. This past weekend, the 50-meter pool on the Georgia Tech campus that once was the stage for stars like American Amy Van Dyken and Russian Alexander Popov was graced by an emerging great.
Ledecky, a 19-year-old from Bethesda, Md., delivered dominant swims at the Atlanta Classic Swim Meet, a warmup competition for the U.S. Olympic Trials starting June 26. In one of her specialties, the 400-meter freestyle, she won Saturday night in 4:00.31, about two seconds off her world-record time. The meet concluded Sunday.
“It was a good swim,” she said. “Not much more to say than that. Felt good, felt strong.”
For her competition, it would rate as something far different. Only one other female swimmer has ever covered 400 meters faster than Ledecky did Saturday night, and she did it in the throes of heavy training for the trials and the Olympics, hardly primed to swim fast.
This summer, and perhaps additional quadrennial summers to come, may validate Ledecky as one of the greatest swimmers to ever knife through the waters of Tech’s McAuley Aquatic Center, or any pool anywhere. A surprise gold medalist in the 2012 Olympics in the 800 freestyle, Ledecky will be a heavy favorite in the 400 and 800 freestyles – she holds the world record in those events – and could win the 200 free also. She would be a heavy favorite in the 1,500 freestyle – she holds that world record, too – but it isn’t part of the Olympic swimming schedule.
“It’s not something where I’m disappointed that (the 1,500) is not in it,” she said. “Tell me what events are there, and I’ll work towards those events.”
It would not stretch the truth to say that swimming has not seen anyone like her previously.
At the world championships last year in Kazan, Russia, Ledecky won the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 freestyles, a range of a long sprint in the 200 to the longest event in swimming. It was an unparalleled demonstration of versatility; no swimmer had ever won those four events in an Olympic or world championship meet.
She has won the admiration and even awe of Natalie Coughin, whose 12 Olympic medals is tied for the most won by an American female. Coughlin also swam this weekend, finishing second in the 100 backstroke in 1:01.18, in her pursuit of a fourth Olympic team berth.
“Katie’s, like, another level,” Coughlin said. “She’s incredible.”
“She is certainly unique,” said Courtney Shealy Hart, Tech’s coach and a two-time gold medalist. “She obviously is a very versatile athlete, and I think people have seen that with Michael Phelps on the male side, but I think it’s been a long time since we’ve seen it on the female side.”
Ledecky, who graduated from high school in 2015 and deferred enrollment at Stanford for a year to prepare for the Olympics, prefers to not entertain such thoughts.
“It’s hard to reflect on it or spend time doing that, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to get caught up in things,” she said.
A most remarkable trait about Ledecky, who stands 6 feet 1 – while her lean body is well-suited for swimming, she is hardly out of the ordinary among her peers.
“She’s relatively short on a world-class scale,” said Bruce Gemmell, her coach. “She’s got small hands, she’s got small feet. She doesn’t have an excessive wingspan. That’s not (the reason for her success).”
Gemmell explains part of her advantage as her pleasure in racing and her earnest desire to find ways to improve daily.
“She doesn’t think about winning,” Gemmell said. “She doesn’t think about accumulating medals. She doesn’t even think about records or her quote-unquote place in history. It’s, I want to get better. She really embraces that.”
Should her performance in Rio live up to the immense expectations, chances are the American sporting public will in turn open its arms to the next American swimming star.
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