By: Emily Li
Katie Ledecky, considered one of the greatest Olympians and female swimmers of all time, has another gold medal under her belt. Ledecky, 25, won the women’s 400-meter freestyle race at the 2022 World Swimming Championships. Since going pro on May 16, 2018, Ledecky has won numerous gold medals, seven of them from the Olympics.
Although Ledecky has won many golds, her victory this week did not come easily. A notable rival in the championships was Canadian sensation Summer McIntosh, who was one second slower than Katie and a strong runner-up. She was within a second of Ledecky with only 100 meters left to go but held off at the last second. Ledecky may have just gained a new rival for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The 2022 World Swimming Championships was filled with potential rivals for Katie Ledecky. However, one major rival was absent. Ariarne Titmus, the only women swimmer that has broken Ledecky’s 400m freestyle record, was not present because she will compete in the Commonwealth Games instead. Titmus said, “[a]nd I really don’t care — it doesn’t bother me that I’m not going to be in the headlines or the media or the spotlight when the world championships are on. That’s not why I swim. I swim because I love it and I want to perform on the biggest stage, which for me is the Olympic Games.” Hopefully sometime in the future, Ledecky and Titmus can have a renewal of their rivalry.
Despite Ariadne Titmus absence, Katie Ledecky’s strong win in 2022’s championships can still be questionable. In the Tokyo Olympics, Ledecky was disappointed with only collecting two gold and two silver medals. While this might seem plenty for the average person, to Ledecky it was a sign that her training was not working. She thought that her training program was strong, but she needed stronger partners. Late last summer, Ledecky moved from Palo Alto, California to Florida, Nesty’s base. Anthony Nesty is a former Olympic gold medalist from Suriname, South America. Now he is head coach of the University of Florida.
Ledecky’s Tokyo teammates trained with Nesty and she was there for practices in Team USA’s pre-Olympics camp. “She asked us if it was OK for her to come here too,” said Finke, a Tokyo teammate of Ledecky. “Who is going to say no to that?” Katie Ledecky’s old base was in Stanford, but due to the pandemic, her training base for the Olympics was at a backyard pool in Atherton, California.
Ledecky is now the most decorated woman in world champion history.
Links:
● https://www.wsj.com/articles/katie-ledecky-swim-training-olympics-11655900721
● https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/sports/olympics/ariarne-titmus-katie-ledecky-swimming-worlds.html