Although she lost her undefeated status at the Olympics (she had won all the individual events contested), Katie Ledecky was one of the great winners of Tokyo 2020. The New Yorker won four medals in the five events in which she participated. Two golds in the 800 (test that revalidates for the third time) and 1,500 free, a silver in the 4×200 free and 400 free and, to complete his performance, he settled for fifth place in the 200 free.
“I’m very happy. I just want to be able to assimilate all this, I don’t even know if I have yet assimilated what I achieved in the London 2012 Games (with 15 years he achieved gold in the 800 free with a world record)“, he commented almost at the top of the Empire State Building, 350 meters high, in an act with the US media. New York at the feet of its queen, as the swimmer will face in Paris 2024 a major challenge: to be the athlete with the most golds in the history of the Games.
Women with the most golds at the Summer Olympics
| Athlete / Sport |
Golds | Medals | Editions |
| Larissa Latynina (Lithuania) / Artistic gymnastics | 9 | 17 | 1956-1964 |
| Birguit Fischer (Germany) / Canoeing | 8 | 12 | 1980-2004 |
| Jenny Thompson (United States) / Swimming | 8 | 12 | 1992-2004 |
| Isabell Werth (Germany) / Equestrian | 7 | 12 | 1992-2020 |
| Vera Cavslavska (Czech Rep.) / Artistic gymnastics | 7 | 12 | 1960-1968 |
| Allyson Felix (USA) / Athletics | 7 | 11 | 2004-2020 |
| Katie Ledecky (United States) / Swimming | 7 | 10 | 2012-2020 |
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Right now, that privilege is held by Lithuanian gymnast Larissa Latynina, winner of nine Olympic titles and 17 medals. Although she still has five other athletes ahead of her, Ledecky is the only one who can now catch up with Latynina. The Stanford University swimmer, now a graduate, has ten Olympic medals, seven of them gold, so she is two. Allyson Felix, also active despite being 36 years old, has seven but Paris 2024 is far away considering that he would arrive with 39. Ledecky, I’m 27.
A ‘duel in the pool’ from Tokyo to Paris
If Katie Ledecky’s record is not even more impressive, it is the fault of a 19-year-old Australian who has burst into the tests that the New Yorker has dominated with an iron fist. It’s about Ariarne Titmus, who left Tokyo with four medals. Two of them were the golds in the 200 and 400 freestyle, tests that Ledecky had won in Rio 2016, when he came in the prime of his career and also set two supersonic world records in the 400 and 800 freestyle.
“I think that each brings out the best in the other. It was nice to compete against her after not being able to do it in 2020,” summarized Ledecky, who will now combine your challenge of Paris 2024 with its entry into the labor market after graduate in Piscology. He loves the humanities and in 2022, at the World Cup in Fukuoka (Japan), will complete a decade as the great dominator of the mediofondo and bottom events in the pool. A string of records that have not yet been finished.
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