Katie Ledecky was born on March 17, 1997, in Washington D.C., and raised in Bethesda, Maryland. She is known as being the most decorated female swimmer in history earning 6 Olympic medals and 14 individual long-course world titles. She has a dad who is an attorney and a mom who was a competitive swimmer that qualified for the Nationals three times. She also has an older brother named Michael who inspired her to swim at the age of 6.

When she was 15, she competed in the 2012 United States Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska making her the youngest American participant in the 2012 Olympic Games. This was her very first senior national competition. Amazingly she made the team by placing first in the 800-meter freestyle with a time of 8:19.78 which was an amazing two minutes ahead of the second-place finisher Kate Ziegler.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Ledecky qualified at the last minute of the 800-meter freestyle by placing third with the final stride. The 15-year-old would soon shock people and go on and win gold by more than 4 seconds. What makes Ledecky so good at swimming is her hard work and determination. She does strength-specific work designed for swimming. She also works on her core and balance outside of the pool.

Katie’s daily eating routine is as follows: She has two pieces of toast with peanut butter, and three pieces of fruit throughout her day including one apple, one pear, and one banana with two servings of chocolate milk as well as a bagel with cream cheese. She also adds in yogurt with honey, pasta with chicken, one streak of rice, and other foods to help her with calories a day.

During the Spring of 2020 when Michael Jordan’s 10-part documentary was released Katie decided to put her own Memento on it, she tweeted her personal video as a toddler playing peek-a-boo with the basketball legend MJ. Katie said during an interview “We had that family video for years” following along with “It was such a neat video, so I posted it around the time of the Netflix documentary.”   

Katie has made a big name for herself having the greatest number of individual gold medals for any female Olympic swimmer, with some calling her the best female swimmer of all time.