Katie Ledecky is back for a fourth Olympics this summer, where she’ll attempt to add even more medals to her already historic swimming career.
Ledecky, who is one of the best female swimmer in American history, is entering the Paris Games with seven gold medals and three silver medals to her name. She’s set plenty of world records and knocked off the then-world champion Kate Ziegler in her Olympics debut when she was just 15 years old.
Now at 27, Ledecky will open the Olympics on the first day of competition Saturday in the women’s 400-meter freestyle. She’ll also compete in both the 800-meter freestyle and the 1,500-meter freestyle, both of which she currently holds the gold medal and world records in. She will also join the 4×200-meter relay team.
Ledecky can make history in Paris if she can add three more medals to her collection, which would surpass Katie Grimes’ record for most by a female swimmer. Grimes, who won 12 medals in her career, represented Team USA in five different Olympics — most recently in 2008.
Let’s look back at Ledecky’s road to the Olympics this summer in France.
2012 London Olympics
Ledecky’s first Olympics were her least dominant by far, but she still walked out of London with her first gold medal.
Ledecky won the gold medal in the women’s 800-meter freestyle when she was just 15 years old. She led right out of the gate, was ahead of the world record pace for nearly all of the race and finished with a time of 8:14.63. She beat Spain’s Mireya Garcia by more than four full seconds, too.
That win made her the second-youngest American woman to win an individual gold medal, and the first U.S. woman to win the event since 2000.
Medals | Gold: 1
2016 Rio Olympics
Ledecky dominated in her second Olympics outing in Brazil in 2016. She won four gold medals and a silver medal in Rio while successfully defending her 800-meter freestyle title. Ledecky shattered her own world record in that race, too.
Ledecky also won gold in both the 200-meter freestyle and the 400-meter freestyle, her only other individual races in the Games that year. Ledecky won the 400-meter final by nearly five full seconds, and she just barely beat Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom to win the 200-meter final.
Ledecky anchored the 4×200-meter freestyle relay team, too. Team USA was trailing by nearly a full second when she first hit the water, and she pushed them past Australia to win the gold medal by just shy of two seconds. Ledecky’s lone slip in those Games, if you can call it that, was in the 4×100-meter relay. Team USA finished in second to Australia, which set a world record time en route to the gold medal, to give Ledecky her first silver medal of her career.
Medals | Gold: 4, Silver: 1
2020 Tokyo Olympics
Ledecky won two more gold medals in Tokyo in 2021. She claimed the 800-meter freestyle for a third straight time, and she won the women’s 1500-meter freestyle, too. Ledecky, after failing to medal in the 200-meter freestyle final earlier in the day, beat the field by more than four seconds in the event, which was added to the Olympics that year for the first time.
Ledecky won silver in the 400-meter freestyle in Tokyo after Australia’s Ariarne Titmus surged ahead down the stretch, though she finished just shy of Ledecky’s world record time. Ledecky and Team USA also won silver in the 4×200-meter relay, too, as all three countries who made the podium in that race beat the previous world record.
Medals | Gold: 2, Silver 2
