Katie Ledecky in the NYT

rivergator · Jun 9, 2024

Katie Ledecky dominates the Sunday Styles cover in today's New York Times. She recently received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first swimmer to get one. She talks about her past medals, looking forward to Paris this summer.

She ordered a grilled chicken salad. She had already swum 5,600 meters (or 224 lengths) that morning and had another practice in a few hours. She estimated that she swims more than 65,000 yards — or about 37 miles — a week. That adds up to 1,900 miles a year, and it means eons of staring at the black line that runs along the bottom of a pool.

The work has not been for nothing. Ms. Ledecky has won 10 Olympic medals, seven of them gold, and 26 World Championship medals, 21 of them gold. She has 24 of the top 25 times in the 800-meter freestyle and 23 of the top 25 times in the 1,500.

For Ms. Ledecky, the hours spent staring at the black line below are far from boring. The repetition allows for creativity within bounds. She focuses on every detail of her stroke — how her hand enters the water, how she rotates, how she breathes — while tuning out the stressors of everyday life. And the practices are hardly robotic or solitary.

In the fall of 2021, Ms. Ledecky, a graduate of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., moved from that city to Gainesville, Fla., home of the University of Florida. Since then, she has been training alongside the Gators’ collegiate teams and other Olympians under Anthony Nesty, the Florida swim and dive coach and one of the head coaches for the U.S. Olympic team.
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Katie Ledecky in the NYT

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