Katie Ledecky: When I was 14, gearing up for the London Olympics or the Olympic Trials, we were trying to perfect my technique. And one day, when I was doing a swimming set, I started swimming with slightly different technique, and it kind of was sort of modeled after what Michael Phelps did with his freestyle stroke. And I started swimming with this different stroke, and when I did that, Yuri said, “That! That’s the stroke. Keep swimming like that.” And so we developed that, stuck with it. And really, I think it was it, it doesn’t look pretty all the time, and you know it, it just was very different I think than how a lot of other female distance swimmers were swimming at the time, and I think that definitely was a contributor to my early, early success and my ability to reach that next level in that Olympic year.
At first, I think people saw my technique and were just kind of surprised by it because they had never seen a female freestyler use that technique. And so, it often was compared to Michael Phelps’s technique or other male swimmers technique. So, it was kind of strange to me at first, but then I also recognized that they were, I think trying to just compliment me and compliment my stroke and how different it was and how unique it was, and so I didn’t take too much offense to it, but I did write in the book how, you know, some of those things are kind of strange to me at times.
And I think now in our sport, you know, I’d like for people to not use those comparisons because I think there’s so many great female swimmers right now. I have such great competition. And I’d like to think that I’ve shown how to swim differently and that other swimmers are using some of those technical strategies, those pacing strategies, kind of how I swim, some of my races. More of my competitors have tried to use some of those techniques. And so that has definitely pushed me and made them better and made our sport better I think.