Katie Ledecky: Yuri was my coach leading up to the London 2012 Olympics, and I was only 15 years old in London. So, if you go back, you know, he was coaching me from about age 11, 10 or 11 until 15. And when I was 14 years old, I really was starting to rise in the national rankings. I qualified for Olympic trials.

I think going into that first Olympic year that, that 2011-2012 season, I was maybe ranked 3rd or 4th in my top events and you have to be top two in the country at the trials to make the Olympic team. So, he sat me down at a goal setting meeting and we were talking through what we wanted to work on in training and he said to me, “Now Katie, what would be the ultimate goal at Olympic trials?” And I kind of was like, “Oh, I don’t know. I mean, what do you, what do you want? Like, I don’t know.” And he said, “Katie, what would be the ultimate goal at Olympic trials?” And I said [mumbles] kind of quietly, “Make the Olympic team?” He said, “OK, say it again.” And I said, “Make the Olympic team.” And he said, “OK, that’s, that’s the goal. We don’t have to talk about it with anyone else. It’s just between us and we don’t have to talk about it the rest of the year, but that’s what we’re working toward.”

And he basically was telling me that he believed in me. He believed that I could achieve that, that I was capable of that. And looking back on that, I think that gave me such confidence, such belief. That planted the seed for making the Olympic team and then ultimately winning the gold medal in London. We never talked about winning the gold medal, but I think once I got past that first hurdle of making the Olympic team, it was very easy for me to visualize myself winning the gold medal because I had built all this confidence up through Yuri’s belief in me, through all the hard work that we had both put into that year, and he just helped me believe that I belonged at that level, even as a young quiet, at times, 15-year-old who was competing at the international level for the very first time.