PARIS — Twelve years as a superstar athlete is an eternity, and in the United States, a shelf life that long usually comes with some level of public blowback or fatigue. Haters materialize to find flaws, inventing them if necessary. Or the superstar can find ways to self-sabotage, fame warping perspective.
Katie Ledecky has experienced none of that in a transcendent career from age 15 to 27. She keeps swimming and winning. We keep cheering. There is nothing not to like and respect.
She is the greatest female swimmer in history, and has built a case to be considered the best female Olympian in any sport. While doing so she has remained cherished, revered and beloved. If any athlete has a 100% approval rating in our fractious country, it’s Ledecky.
There’s just no material for the haters. And Ledecky has done nothing to derail herself the way some swimmers have. Her life is devoid of drama and controversy. She’s the best we have, and everyone loves her. Even the people she beats.
That, as much as 14 total Olympic medals and nine golds, is her legacy-in-the-making. (She’s not done yet, so stand by.) But we would be remiss not to take a moment and talk about all that hardware.
Only Michael Phelps has won more gold medals. Only two Summer Olympians have won more total medals. Ledecky’s four-peat Saturday night in the 800-meter freestyle—with victories in the event in 2012, ’16, ’21 and now ’24—ties Phelps as the only swimmers to win the same event in four straight Olympics.
It should be noted that Phelps actually shared domination of the 200 individual medley with Ryan Lochte, who set and still holds the world record in that event. Ledecky remains utterly without peer in both the 800 and 1,500. (She would have two more gold medals to her name if the Olympics had the latter race for women before 2021.)
This fourth 800 gold was the most challenging. Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, who was 11 years old watching Ledecky win her first 800-meter title on TV, has arisen as a worthy rival in the race—and as Ledecky’s superior in the 400. Prior to Titmus, Ledecky won her first Olympic 800 by 4.13 seconds and her second by a preposterous 11.38; the last two have been competitive.
Ledecky’s margin of victory in Tokyo three years ago was 1.26 seconds. Saturday it was 1.25, with Titmus in uncomfortably close stalking range for the first 500 meters. Finally, in the 12th and 13th laps of the race, Ledecky cracked it open just enough—a .32 advantage on one tape, then .56 on the next—and Titmus could not respond.
At that point, Ledecky’s family—parents Mary Gen and Dave, brother Michael, aunts and uncles—finally let loose their tightly crossed arms and started cheering Katie home. Ledecky just had to finish, to a rising crescendo of noise. Her international approval rating might be as high as it is domestically, with the French crowd at La Défense Arena urging her on passionately.
When Ledecky hit the wall, she threw her head back in relief. This was a bit different than the water-slapping, roaring Katie after demolishing the field in the 1,500 a few nights earlier.
“I just felt a lot of pressure from myself just from my history in the race,” Ledecky said. “And I knew going into it that it was going to be a really tough race and that everyone in the field was going to throw everything they had at me.”
They did. Titmus swam her lifetime best. And American bronze medalist Paige Madden—herself a tremendous success story—dropped a whopping seven seconds from her personal best across two swims here in Paris.
Both exited the race proud of themselves, and lauding the woman who beat them.
“It’s such an honor to race alongside someone like Katie,” Titmus said. “I just have the most incredible respect for her. I know how hard it is to defend a title and to go four in a row is unreal. I’m happy that she was the one to beat me to keep a streak alive because that’s just remarkable.”
As has become customary with Ledecky, she celebrated the accomplishment of her teammate as much as her own. Ledecky lifted Madden’s arm in triumph after the race, then pulled her up onto the top step of the medial podium for the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
Madden has won Olympic silver medals on 800 freestyle relays in 2021 and ‘24, but this was her first time hearing her national anthem from the podium as an Olympian. She made it about a stanza into singing the song before the tears started flowing. Ledecky, the old podium pro, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her.
“She's definitely rewritten distance freestyle and just swimming in general,” Madden said. “I think coming full circle from watching her on the TV to now being her peer and her teammate, being on that 4X200 relay, was so so special.”
Putting two women on the 800 freestyle podium, one of them gold, was part of the salvage operation the U.S. needed in the swimming competition. The entire meet has been a struggle, particularly on the men’s side, bottoming out with star Caeleb Dressel missing the final in the 100 butterfly and placing sixth in the 50 freestyle Friday night.
The Americans were reeling leaving the pool after that, but rallied Saturday with Ledecky and a world-record gold in the mixed medley relay. In that race, program linchpin Ryan Murphy atoned for missing the final in the 200 back with a blistering first leg, then breastroker Nic Fink kept the U.S. head-to-head with the Chinese, then the female tandem of Gretchen Walsh (butterfly) and an on-fire Torri Huske (freestyle) pulled away on the back half. Huske in particular threw down a nasty underwater on the final turn to kick away to a lead, then held on at the end.
With that inspiring double, the U.S. moved within one of rival Australia in the gold-medal count, now trailing 7-6. The total medal count already is over in America’s favor, 25-16, but the Aussies crowed heavily after winning the gold count last year at World Championships, and the U.S. would love to reverse that.
There are realistic opportunities to add three more golds on the final day of competition Sunday, in the men’s and women’s medley relays and Bobby Finke in the 1,500. (Finke will be striving to avert America’s first Olympics without an individual men’s swimming gold medal since 1900.)
If all those races break right, it will erase much of what has gone wrong at La Défense Arena. But there still will be some reckoning to do for U.S. Swimming moving toward Los Angeles in 2028.
One thing it won’t have to worry about is whether Katie Ledecky still has her heart in the sport. She plans to keep going, and the potential Ledecky love-in on American soil—and in American water—would be the valedictory the legend deserves.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Legendary Katie Ledecky Just Keeps Swimming and Winning. And She’s Not Done Yet.
