PARIS — In October of 2013, Erin Gemmell was, in a sense, no different than thousands of 8-year-olds across America. She was a sporty girl who’d watched the London Olympics and idolized a teenage swimmer named Katie Ledecky. She was also searching for a Halloween costume. Her third-grade peers were going as superheroes. So, little Erin had an idea.
She borrowed a medal and jacket from her older brother.
She grabbed a pair of goggles.
To complete the costume, she needed a swim cap — and that’s where she tapped into a connection that separated her from most young girls.
She was the daughter of Ledecky’s then-coach, Bruce Gemmell.
And now, over a decade later, she is Ledecky’s Olympic teammate.
They will swim for gold together on Thursday night in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay here in Paris. They have spent parts of the last two months training in the same pools, snapping selfies together at a pre-Games camp. They are savoring this special chapter of a story that began with Erin as “the coach's cute little kid” but “definitely an annoying child,” and Ledecky as the kind-hearted high school sophomore who also happened to be an Olympic gold medalist. Ledecky was so kind that, to complete Erin’s costume, she donated a personalized Team USA swim cap.
And it is, of course, no coincidence that the story came full-circle.
Ledecky has been “such a big influence,” Gemmell said. “I don't think I would really be here if it weren't for her.”
Following her idol's lead
Erin was born into a swimming family. Bruce and her mother, Barbara, swam collegiately. Her older brother, Andrew, became an Olympian. In 2012, the family moved from Delaware to the Washington D.C. area, where Bruce became the head coach at Nation’s Capital Swim Club, home base of a then-15-year-old Ledecky.
As they prepared for the move, Erin tagged along to a swim-team holiday party at a restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland. She remembers being “terrified” of Ledecky. But her idol, she says, was “welcoming to a little 7-year-old fan.”
Erin, at the time, was — not necessarily a “reluctant” swimmer, Bruce remembers, just a 7-year-old with other interests. As she grew toward her teenage years, she dabbled in gymnastics, basketball, softball, soccer, dance. She swam, but she preferred to spend summers at a YMCA camp on the Chesapeake. Her parents tried not to push her into the family sport.
She was pulled, though, indirectly, by Andrew and by Ledecky.
As she began to recognize her own talent, she also had proof of concept, “knowing that people before me have done it, and I can do it, too,” Erin said.
On Ledecky specifically, she noted: “It's really special to be able to be that close to someone who is so inspirational, getting to see the day-to-day work that they put in. It makes it seem more achievable, in a way, being so close. It makes them seem a lot more human. It just really showed me that if I put my mind to it, I could eventually reach that point.”
At 13, Erin won the 200 freestyle at junior national championships, and that's when Bruce realized she might be on a similar trajectory. She didn't obsess over the sport like Ledecky does; but she loved racing, and chose to pursue a similar path. In 2021, Erin began exploring colleges. On a west-coast swing shortly after watching the Tokyo Games, Bruce texted Katie, who, in 2016, had matriculated to Stanford. "Hey," coach asked former pupil, "we're gonna take an informal tour around Stanford. What should we see?" He assumed Ledecky was back home with family in Maryland.
Ledecky — probably days removed from four medals at a grueling Games halfway around the world, Bruce recalls — responded: "I'm at Stanford the next two days, why don't I meet you and give you guys a tour?"
They were five years removed from working together. But the relationship, even at a distance, remained intact. It then morphed into a unique bond between Ledecky and Erin when the awestruck girl from the holiday party became a USA teammate.
'Something I'll never forget'
The mentor was in Lane 4, the mentee in Lane 6, on June 17, 2024, at U.S. trials. They sprang off blocks at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, and raced through the 200 free final for spots on the Olympic team. Ledecky’s spot, of course, was virtually guaranteed. But when she touched the wall first, she still looked up, anxiously, and waited.
And when she saw it, the “4” next to Gemmell’s name, good enough for a place on the U.S. 4x200 relay, Ledecky climbed over a lane line. She looked toward Gemmell. She beamed. She threw herself into an embrace with the now-19-year-old. Gemmell hung on and looked back at her hero, agape, in disbelief.
“It's something I've been working towards basically since I can remember,” Gemmell later said. “And to get to share it with somebody that has seen me working towards that, and has supported me all the way, and to have her out there with me in the moment, made it so special.”
Ledecky, from the opposite side of the relationship, felt exactly the same.
“To see how far she's come was such a special moment,” Ledecky said a day later. “And something I'll never forget.”
So off they went, first to North Carolina, then to Croatia, then to Paris, on an Olympic journey together, with matching shirts made to commemorate it. It will culminate Thursday, when they’ll battle alongside Claire Weinstein and Paige Madden, against Australia and China, for medals.
And in Bruce’s eyes, no matter where they finish, they — and he — will have won.
“I don't care how fast Katie swims.; my daughter going through it with Katie's leadership and mentorship and [as a] role model — a parent can't ask anything more than that,” he says.
He recalled a dinner after Rio 2016, after Ledecky’s four golds, as she prepared to depart for Stanford. His biggest “thank you,” he realized that night, “wasn't how fast she swam, wasn't the fact that I got to travel the world with her, wasn't the … financial incentive, whatever. It was that she had been the role model for my daughter.”
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