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.

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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

For Michael Phelps, Five Is Another Magic Number

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OMAHA, Neb. – The simple gesture spoke of a number, and it was appropriate, for matchless numbers have defined so much of Michel Phelps’ swimming career.

This time, the number was a five, which Phelps noted by holding up his left hand and spreading the fingers wide after he won Wednesday night’s 200-meter butterfly final at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming.

It meant Phelps, who turns 31 Thursday, had become the first man to make five U.S. Olympic swim teams.

“God, I’ve been in the sport a long time,” Phelps said.

Michael Phelps' infant son.  Tweet from his sister, Hilary.

He had been just 15 when he made his first team in 2000, also in the 200 butterfly. He was then the youngest U.S. men’s Olympic swimmer since 1932. Should he win an individual event gold medal at the upcoming Rio Olympic Games, he would be the oldest man ever to do that in the Olympics.

Dara Torres, the only other U.S. swimmer to make five Olympic teams, distinguished herself as the oldest swimmer (41) to win an Olympic medal.

Phelps made the team for what he swears will be a final time with a swim he called harder than any in his life. He did it by going out hard and hoping to hang on, the same way he has managed to hang on and push forward despite a tidal wave of personal drama.

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Litherland Triplets Embrace Brother Jay’s Moment At Swim Trials

Jay Litherland (left) and Chase Kalisz celebrate after taking the top two spots, with Kalisz first, in the 400-meter individual medley at the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials.  (Getty Images)

OMAHA, Neb. – Jay Litherland pulled himself out of the water and into a quick hug from one of his brothers. And then another hug, from his other brother.

Mick and Kevin Litherland had scampered onto the pool deck at CenturyLink Center with the same speed Jay showed over the final two laps of the 400-meter individual medley, the speed that allowed him to finish second Monday night in the first final of the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming.

These are three brothers separated by a minute each at birth, three brothers whose lives in three countries have been 20 years of fraternal embrace, three brothers who chose to stay in the same bedroom for a couple months after their parents moved into a house with a bedroom for each.

“It was kind of hard to move out,” Jay said, “and it felt really weird when we did. We’ve never really split up.”

No wonder the moment when Jay put himself into a position to be on the U.S. Olympic team was something the Litherland triplets could not wait to share.

FOR THE WHOLE STORY ON TEAMUSA.ORG, CLICK HERE