{"id":15753,"date":"2024-07-16T10:23:13","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T10:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/?p=15753"},"modified":"2024-07-16T10:23:14","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T10:23:14","slug":"ledecky-remains-the-gold-standard-heading-into-her-fourth-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/?p=15753","title":{"rendered":"Ledecky Remains the Gold Standard Heading into Her Fourth Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Los Angeles: Twelve years on from her stunning victory in the 800m freestyle at the London Olympics, Katie Ledecky is heading to her fourth straight Games in Paris, aiming to extend her stunning run of sustained excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American freestyle great, whose talent Michael Phelps mentor Bob Bowman once called \u201cotherworldly,\u201d brings a level-headed attitude that doesn\u2019t hide a fierce competitiveness as she bids to add to her stash of 10 Olympic medals \u2014 seven of them gold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s only the ninth American swimmer to qualify for at least four Olympic teams, and hearing Ledecky tell it, competing on her sport\u2019s biggest stage and the backbreaking work it takes to make it happen never gets old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a bit the other way around for me,\u201d says Ledecky. \u201cI feel like I enjoy it more and more every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a testament to the people that I have around me, the people that I\u2019ve had around me my whole career in Bethesda, Maryland, and Stanford, now in Florida, just great communities that I\u2019m excited about. sport \u2013 great teammates who push me every day, great coaches who believe in me and push me to keep reaching bigger and bigger goals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ledecky has dominated long-distance freestyle swimming for more than ten years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was just 15 when she won the 800 meters at the London Games. She repeated it four years later in Rio, when her 800m triumph was part of a four-gold haul that included the 200m and 400m free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics, Ledecka captured her third straight 800m free gold and won the 1500m free, the first time she was added to the Olympic women\u2019s program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she was relegated to silver in the 400m free in Tokyo and will be tested right out of the gate in the Paris race with Australia\u2019s Ariarne Titmus and Canadian teenager Summer McIntosh, who briefly held the world record last year. \u2013 favored over the American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McIntosh also handed Ledecka her first defeat in an 800m final since 2010 at a February meet in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI care a lot about the 800 and 1500, and then the 400 is a great race,\u201d said Ledecky. \u201cI want to be right there and the same with the (4x200m) relay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ledecka said the addition of the 1,500m to the women\u2019s Olympic program changed her training focus somewhat, making the 200m freestyle more of a stretch and prompting her to drop the 200m individual medley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the kind of adjustment she seems to have made without a hitch, as she\u2019s moved through the age group and college ranks and now to her Florida training base with coach Anthony Nesty \u2014 who won Suriname\u2019s pioneering Olympic gold in butterfly in 1988.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely been a learning process and it\u2019s changed as I\u2019ve gotten older,\u201d says Ledecky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI learned different things about myself, about my training, about nutrition, about my recovery, about all those things that come into play.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ledecky\u2019s longevity means she now competes with a host of young rivals she herself inspired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019d really be here if it wasn\u2019t for her,\u201d says U.S. Olympian Erin Gemmel, who dressed up as Ledecka for Halloween in 2013 and is now likely to join her in the 4x200m freestyle relay in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ledeck\u00e1 did not imagine it when she started swimming as a six-year-old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a little boy, I didn\u2019t even dream of getting to the Olympics,\u201d says Ledecky. \u201cAfter London, I wanted to get back to that level, to prove that I\u2019m not just a one-hit wonder, but at the same time I reminded myself that anything more than that is just the icing on the cake, the icing on top \u2014 because I never thought that I\u2019ll make it to one Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles: Twelve years on from her stunning victory in the 800m freestyle at the London Olympics, Katie Ledecky is heading to her fourth straight Games in Paris, aiming to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":15754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[378,1266],"class_list":["post-15753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-swimming-championship","tag-world-olympics-association"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15755,"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15753\/revisions\/15755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theasiantelegraph.global\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}