Even Losing Her Footing In Defeat, Fencer Muhammad Still Stands Tall

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RIO DE JANEIRO – For Ibtihaj Muhammad, this was the long-awaited chapter in a lengthy narrative that had put her in a position of epic significance. It ended with her in an unremarkable position of discomfit, lying on a fencing strip at Carioca Arena 3 in the Olympic Park yet still standing for so much more.

It was just past noon on the third full day of the 2016 Olympics. A little more than an hour earlier, Muhammad had become the first woman in hijab to compete for the United States in an Olympics. That historic moment had been subsumed in her mind by the need to focus on her first match, in the round of 32, which she won 15-13.
 
Now it was match point in the round of 16, and Muhammad had lost her footing. She remained on her backside for the minute of official review before the referee awarded what would be the final point of a 15-12 score to her opponent, Cecilia Berder of France.
 
Down. And quickly out of the tournament for the Olympic saber title, an outcome not unexpected among fencing cognoscenti but unwanted for those who hoped for more exposure of the symbol Muhammad had become.
 
“I wouldn’t say I felt down and out,” Muhammad said. “At the end of the day, I realized that this moment of me in sport and representing my country and the Muslim community is bigger than myself.”

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Compared To Past, Rio May Seem Like Day At The Beach For Both Lochte, Franklin

RIO DE JANEIRO – This is a city whose global renown owes to a feeling that life is a beach – a virtual mandate to let the good times roll on Ipanema and Copacabana. So maybe it’s fitting that the 2016 Olympic Games will seem like lazy days on the strand for Missy Franklin and Ryan Lochte compared to their past experiences in the summer Games.

The irony is neither is likely to have days in the sun the way Franklin did in 2012, and Lochte did in both 2012 and 2008. 

This time around, they are Olympians, not stars, each swimming far fewer events than in the past, each likely to consider an individual event medal of any color as good as the golds they won four years ago in London.

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"Not Superwoman But Pretty Super:" Ledecky Gets Silver Surprise In 400 Free Relay

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RIO DE JANEIRO - Four years ago this week, Great Britain’s Rebecca Adlington had a first-hand view of the moment that surprisingly was the start of the Katie Ledecky era in women’s swimming.
 
Saturday afternoon, on the opening day of swimming at the 2016 Olympics, Adlington had a different vantage point on another Ledecky swim that seemed equally surprising.
 
A near-repeat performance Saturday night brought Ledecky a silver medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle, an event in which there had been no guarantee she would compete.
 
“She’s just amazing,” Adlington said as she stood on a bus for the brief ride between the pool and the Main Press Center.

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Katie Ledecky: a (training) day in the life

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By Philip Hersh | Aug 4, 2016
Special to espnW.com

Here is what a typical training day looked like for Katie Ledecky in her final months of preparation for the 2016 Olympic Games. After completing two courses last fall at Georgetown University -- Comparative Political Systems and History of China I -- the Stanford-bound Ledecky went on hiatus from school until this September to concentrate on swimming.

Her normal weekly schedule included six days of swim practice and three days of dryland workouts. This schedule is based on a first practice at 5 a.m. ET in the 25-yard pool at Bethesda's Georgetown Prep, about eight miles (20 minutes with no traffic) from her home in Bethesda, Maryland.

4:05 a.m.: Wake-up. "She has had to wake us up a couple times, but we've never had to wake her up," her father Dave said.

FOR THE FULL STORY ON ESPNW, CLICK HERE

Repetitive brilliance defines Katie Ledecky

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BY PHILIP HERSH

It is repetition that defines Katie Ledecky. You see it when she stands on the starting block, waiting for the signals that begin a race, pushing and pulling on her swim cap several times, using her hands and elbows and the crook of her arm to fiddle with her goggles. It is why, for reasons she cannot remember, she claps her hands three times just before the beep to dive into the pool, a ritual that has always worked and therefore stands as its own reason.

There is comfort in doing things the same way. At critical moments, it removes the confusion of change. And yet, at the moment the world first saw the record-breaking swimming that would become the emblematic definition of Ledecky, it also saw a 15-year-old with the presence of mind to realize there was a time to let the ritual go.

It was just before the 800-meter freestyle final at the 2012 London Olympics. Ledecky could barely hear the starter given the noise from a crowd determined to will the Brit, Rebecca Adlington, to a second straight Olympic gold medal in the race. Ledecky worried about being late to take her mark if she clapped, worried that everyone else would leave her behind at the start. She was the youngest of 532 athletes on the U.S. team, in many eyes a very unexpected qualifier, so why wouldn't she feel a little uncertain?

She thought about the karmic consequences of breaking the routine and the value of playing it safe. Then she gave in to a bit of teenage angst.

"I was like, 'I don't want to embarrass myself and not go when everyone else does,'" she said.

A little more than eight minutes later, the crowd would do the clapping. Beating the field (including the favored Adlington, who finished third) by more than four seconds, Ledecky was Olympic champion. She also broke the U.S. record set 23 years earlier by Janet Evans, the four-time Olympic champion and multiple world-record setter who remains a standard against whom all women's distance swimmers are judged.

It was the beginning of the pattern with which Katie Ledecky has defined herself in a sport where doing something over and over again is necessary to succeed, where she has had one stunning swim after another. World record after world record, world title after world title.

For my whole long form profile of Katie on ESPN.COM, click here