Katie Ledecky American competitive swimmer

American competitive swimmer Katie Ledecky

• She is an American competitive swimmer
• She has won seven Olympic medals
• She is the World record holder in the women’s 800 and 1500m freestyle.

Kathleen Ledecky is an American swimmer born on March 17 1997. She is a competitive swimmer who has won seven Olympic gold medals and 19 world championship gold medals.

Ledecky has kept a record in Women’s swimming for having earned six individual gold medals at the Olympics, 14 individual gold medals at the World Aquatics Championships and an overall 22 medals at the World Aquatics Championships.

Personal Life

Katie was born in Washington DC and raised in the suburbs of Bethesda Maryland, to her parents Mary Gen and David Ledecky. Her mother is of Irish origin. Her full name is Kathleen Genevieve Ledecky.

Her uncle Ledecky is a businessman and a co-owner of the NHL team New York Islanders. The swimmer began swimming at six years due to her elder brother’s influence and also her mother who swam for the University of New Mexico.

Education Background

Katie attended Little Flower School through eighth grade and graduated from Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland.

She made her first splash in international swimming, setting an Olympic trials record in the 800m freestyle to qualify for the 2012 London Games as the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic swimming team.

Katie Ledecky. Photo/CNN

She then joined Stanford University on an athletic scholarship and was under coach Greg Meehan’s Stanford Cardinal women’s swimming team. At the University she undertook a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a minor in political science.

Career

In her first senior national competition, Ledecky made the Olympic team by placing first in the 800m freestyle which was over two seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.

In Omaha, she placed third in the 400m freestyle that being the fastest time ever swum by a 15 years old American. At the 2012 Olympic Games, she was the youngest American participant.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, she qualified to swim in the final of the 800m freestyle placing third overall. In the final, Katie won gold by more than four seconds breaking a record that had been kept for over twenty years.

Her gold was the first international medal of her career, earning her the year’s Best Female Performance of the Year and Breakout Performer of the Year at the Golden Google Awards.

At the US National Championships, the swimmer qualified to swim in four individual events and the 4×200 meter freestyle relay at the 2013 World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona, Spain though she later dropped the 200m freestyle in her program.

At the National Championships, she finished first in the 400m, 800m, and 1500 and second in the 200m freestyle.

Under the guidance of coach Bruce Gemmell, Ledecky proved her capability of winning both middle and long-distance events, establishing world records in the 800 and 1500-meter freestyles with four gold medals at the 2013 FINA World Championships.

She claimed four more golds at the 2014 Pan Pacific swimming championships and FINA World Championships the following year becoming the first woman to win the 200, 400, 800 and 1500m freestyle in a major competition.

The champion swimmer was accepted at Stanford University before her graduation but she prioritized deferring enrollment to focus on training for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Prepared well enough before the start of the Olympic competition, she set a record in the 800m freestyle at the Arena Pro Swim series at the beginning of the year.

Katie Ledecky. Photo/Leading Authorities

In addition, she headed into the summer as the world record holder in the 400 and 1500-meter freestyles. Unbeaten in all major international competitions, she was expected to add to her already impressive gold medal count and become one of the American team’s most celebrated Olympians by the close of the 2016 Rio Games.

She also helped her teammates win silver in the women’s 4×100 meter freestyle relay as she won gold in the 200m freestyle race.

She continued to dominate as the anchor in the 4x200m freestyle relay, winning the gold medal with her teammates and defending her 2012 world title in the 80m individual freestyle smashing the world record.

With the gold win, she became the second woman to win three individual freestyle events in a single Olympic game.

Ledecky competed at the 2021 Olympic Games swimming and won in the 200m, 400, 800, and 1500 meters freestyle. She also won at the Longhorn Elite Invite long course 100-meter freestyle final.