Monday, September 22, 2014

This Is Katie F-​-​-ing Ledecky: A Thesis About Kicking Ass

Grantland writes about Katie Ledecky, This Is Katie F-​-​-ing Ledecky: A Thesis About Kicking Ass

"Katie Ledecky swims freestyle in a way that produces the following sentences; think of them as the splashes she makes on her turns. She’s never lost in an international final. She’s owned an Olympic gold medal for more than two years. (Again: She’s 17.) This summer, wearing slow swimsuits,1 and without really being in major-competition shape, she broke every world record in her discipline, long-distance freestyle, over the course of a month and a half. Then she was like, ha! just kidding, so she broke a couple of them again."

"She also broke the 400-meter freestyle world record this summer. Twice. And the 1,500-meter freestyle world record. Also twice. The second time, at the Pan Pacific Championships in Australia this August, she took almost six seconds off the world-record pace she had set in June. If, by some catastrophic barrel-fish-eludes-bullet mishap, I have not persuaded you of the basic thesis of this article, please read that sentence again. Or this one: She has personally lowered the world record in the 1,500 by 14 seconds since the summer of 2013. Or this one: She finished the Pan Pac final a slim 27 seconds ahead of the second-place swimmer. Or this one: Her time in the Pan Pac final would have been good for a top-20 finish at the U.S. National Championships … on the men’s side."

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