PARIS — Katie Ledecky was only halfway through her history-making 2024 Olympics when an unprepared journalist asked the question now on the tips of American tongues.
Ledecky is 27. She will be 31 in 2028, when the Summer Olympics come to U.S. soil for the first time since she was born. So the question was understandable: "Is it realistic to think you might want to compete in Los Angeles in four years?"
The answer, though, has already been given.
“Yeah,” Ledecky said Wednesday. “I mean, I've been consistent over these last few months, and last few years, in saying that I would love to compete in LA."
"That could change," she clarified. She cannot predict who or where she will be in four years. She does not know how fast she'll be able to swim when she reaches her 30s. No female swimmer, after all, had ever won Olympic gold beyond their 27th birthday — before Ledecky this week.
But she wants to "give it everything I have for as long as I have left in me," she said Saturday. She'd just won her ninth career Olympic gold and fourth consecutive 800-meter freestyle at the Games. When asked specifically about the possibility of a five-peat in Los Angeles, she said: "I'd love to."
In both answers, she gave the necessary caveat. “I mean, you never know,” Ledecky said. “I really just take it year by year at this point. I really haven't thought much beyond this week, in terms of what my fall is gonna look like, what my next year is gonna look like.” She certainly hasn’t sketched out the next four years.
“But, yeah, I don't feel like I'm close to being finished in the sport yet,” Ledecky said. “I'd love to continue on. And just seeing the kind of support that the French athletes are getting here, I think all of the U.S. athletes are thinking about how cool that could be in Los Angeles, having the home crowd. That would be amazing to be able to compete there."
But even if the next Olympics weren’t a home-soil Olympics, she would surely stick with swimming. Because she adores it. It brings her habitual joy. It pushes her, and tests her. It brings her camaraderie and routine. “I love this sport so much,” she said last weekend.
That is not to say the next four years won’t bring change. Ledecky has spent each successive Olympic quad in a different place, with a different coach and teammates, in a different phase of life. She was a kid training under Yuri Suguiyama for London 2012. She was a high school star working with Bruce Gemmell toward Rio 2016. She went off to Stanford ahead of Tokyo, then to Florida for the past three years.
There is no indication that she will go anywhere else for the next three years. She has spoken glowingly and emotionally about her coach, Anthony Nest, and distance-swimming teammates, Bobby Finke and Kieran Smith. But she has mentioned spicing up her life with pursuits outside the pool — perhaps law school or grad school.
The only certainty is that she will continue swimming.
“I think 2028 would be an incredible cap on my career,” she said in a TV interview this spring — and then she corrected herself. “I don't even wanna say [‘cap’] at this point, because who knows. I could get to 2028 and say, ‘No, I don't want to be done yet, I want to keep going.’”
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