Unless you marked your calendars for specific events, it’s likely that while browsing Olympics coverage you’ll happen upon an event midway through its run. If you tuned in midway through the women’s 1500 metre freestyle swimming event, you would have seen a fresco of fury as three swimmers battled for victory. Charging ahead, they thrashed through the water, each doing their very best to eke out their neighbour while reserving some energy for their afterburners in the final 100 metres. Closely fought, you may have thought there would be high drama: leads toppled and regained, margins getting ever finer, and victory destined for only one of the three competitors. Then the camera panned, showing Katie Ledecky of Team USA almost half a pool’s length in front. You would have realised that with her in the pool, one can only aspire to a silver medal.

 

Christened ‘The First Lady of Freestyle’, Katie Ledecky is now the most decorated woman in American Olympic history with thirteen Olympic medals. She also equals the 60-year record for most Olympic golds, nine, by a female athlete. However, these metrics fail to capture the enormity of Ledecky’s dominance in distance swimming. Considered reserved and unassuming, Ledecky’s stardom is based almost exclusively on her performance in the water. If the phrase ‘let the results speak for themselves’ was an athlete, it would be Katie Ledecky. Pre-race antics or the psyching out of opponents during pre-race interviews are absent. No wonder, since Ledecky’s story is one full of heart and community. Unlike those with laser-focussed vision from the off, Ledecky’s ambitions, like leaves carried along the surface of a river, gently flowed toward the Olympics. Her initial team, the Palisades Porpoises, was essentially an extended family going to swim meets. Win or lose, the post-meet celebration was the same: breezy and bright. Only after outstripping everyone in the region did she move clubs and learn from coach Yuri Suguiyama. Here, she developed her famous ‘galloping’ swim technique. Sensing real potential, Suguiyama was the one to suggest trialling for the Olympics - an idea yet to materialise in the Ledecky family.
In her hometown of Bethesda, Maryland - where she first took up swimming aged six - there lies a framed photo on her bookshelf. On the front, a fourteen year-old Ledecky is getting ready to do laps in an extra (solo) training session. Inscribed on the back are some words of wisdom from Suguiyama: ‘I’ve always thought of someone’s swimming career as chapters of a book […] I’ve got a really neat feeling that the best are yet to come.’ A week later, Ledecky trialled for the London 2012 Olympics and qualified for Team USA, becoming the youngest athlete of the USA cohort at that Olympics aged just fifteen.

 

Qualifying only for the 800 metre freestyle, all prior work culminated in her walk up to the starting blocks - a relative unknown compared to giants Rebecca Adlington, Lotte Friis and Mireia Belmonte Garcia. Ledecky started hard and fast, stunning the field and already a body length ahead by the 200 metre mark. While onlookers thought - and competitors hoped - that she would falter as the race progressed, she secured the gold by four seconds, just narrowly missing the world record. In every way her strategy goes against popular opinion – to start out slower and reserve energy for a big push toward the end. To her, ‘all distances are sprints, but some sprints are longer than others’. The question remains how she manages to sprint for so long.

 

All freestyle stroke styles exist on a spectrum that plays off speed against efficiency. The slowest but most efficient form is hip-driven, where the arms play a far more reduced role in propelling the swimmer through the water. Faster, but wasteful, is shoulder-driven - commonly seen when swimmers barrel down the pool in a 50 metre sprint. Ledecky’s hybrid ‘gallop’, involves one arm doing more work than the other.The stronger arm effectively turns the head back into the water following a breath while the other begins to pull water back. By naturally generating torque during each stroke cycle, Ledecky maximises the efficiency of her movement and reaps the benefits the longer the distance.

 

Since London 2012, Ledecky has continued to dominate, clearing up world championships and Olympics alike. Medal or world record, all fell before her. Every year Ledecky pushed the record time lower and lower – culminating in a dominant showing of force in Rio 2016, with four golds and two world records. Challenging herself with a sprint, she put herself amongst some of swimming’s greats and outclassed them all during the 200 metre freestyle. Moreover, she has spent most of her life undefeated in long-distance (1500 metre and 800 metre) freestyle races.She rules these races with an iron grip. Last losing a 1500 metre freestyle aged 13 in 2010, she has since remained invincible. She also holds 29 of the fastest 30 times in the 800 metre freestyle. Here, she had been similarly invincible until February of this year, where Canadian rising star and four-time Paris Olympic medalist Summer McIntosh usurped her. Nevertheless, Ledecky took to the pool this Olympics, in the Paris La Defense Arena, and regained her title.

 

Since her drive to dominate at competitive swimming came about as a consequence of her exceptional performance, rather than as a stimulus, Ledecky makes for an interesting competitor. Since childhood she has engaged in early morning (4:30 am) training sessions out of a love for the sport, rather than for competitive glory. Even today Ledecky’s primary goals are time, splits and technique; dominating is merely the byproduct of that. Athletes sometimes become complacent when they have won it all. Not with Ledecky - a yearning for the pool and a ruthless dedication to her craft are kindling for a blazing fire which keeps her at the summit of the sport.
Ledecky wants to compete in LA 2028, and while some races she held in her peak have fallen to competitors as they have adopted her techniques, she plans to keep hold of her core races one more time. If she does, she will have won the 800 metre freestyle five times, and completed the hat-trick with the 1500 metre freestyle. Sustained success over four Olympics is already the world’s best, but to stretch this to five will be nothing short of superhuman.

 

From obsessing with her brother in the Palisades pool, to shocking the world and revolutionising long-distance swimming in London, Ledecky now enters any race with nothing left to prove. However, it has always been the sanctuary of the pool and her love for swimming which fuelled her. As it has countless times before, a genuine love for a talent could once again help someone transcend human limits.