In a sports obsessed world, Katie Ledecky should be a superstar. If you are a sports fan, she should be topic numbers one through five in every conversation that has any relationship to sports today. Unfortunately, that won’t be the case.
Let’s face it. If we want to be honest we have to admit that we live in a world where we overvalue athletes. Or shall I say, certain athletes. For proof we need look no further than the front page of the Thursday (August 6, 2015) Washington Post sports section where they list the 50 highest paid running backs in the National Football League. With one exception, all of them earn annual salaries over $3,000,000. Twenty-one earn $10,000,000 or more and four of those 21 are paid at least $40,000,000 annually. Twenty-two have yet to rush for 1,000 yards in a season (a more respectable measure when Jim Brown was regularly reaching that level in a 12 game season compared to the current 16 game slate) and five of the players on the list have never played a single down in the NFL.
Meanwhile, in Kazan, Russia yesterday, Ledecky won the women’s 200 meter freestyle and few are paying attention. True, she didn’t set a world record but the simple fact that the 18 year old from Bethesda, MD won this race should be reason enough for her to be topic number one today. For those of you who don’t know, the 200 meter win was Ledecky’s third gold medal of the World Championships. Earlier in the week, she won the 400 meter (in which she holds the world record) and the 1,500 meter race (in which she bested her previous world best by more than two seconds).
Simply qualifying for the final of the 200 meter race was an astonishing accomplishment. Ledecky had to swim her semifinal heat less than half an hour after her record setting 1,500 meter swim. How crazy is that? Think of Alan Webb (or if you’re old enough Jim Ryun) winning a medal in the 1,500 meter or mile at an international competition then turning around and racing in a 200 meter sprint against a field that had say Carl Lewis and Tyson Gay.
It’s the sort of thing that’s just not done. Unless you’re Katie Ledecky.
Ledecky is the prohibitive favorite to win the 800 meter race on Saturday. She’s the current world record holder at this distance as well and no one in the field has had a time within 10 seconds of her this year. And if she does, indeed, win that race on Saturday then she should be celebrated and feted as few athletes have been.
No athlete, male or female, has won the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 freestyle at the same world championship competition. Let me repeat that: No athlete, male or female, has won the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 freestyle at the same world championship competition. And Katie Ledecky sits on the verge of accomplishing just that. Even the incomparable Michael Phelps never dared to challenge the different demands of distance and sprint swimming. He never competed at a distance longer than 200 meters for any single stroke or 400 meters (in the individual medley of 4 different strokes) in his career let alone in a single competition.
It’s the sort of thing that’s just not done. Unless you’re Katie Ledecky.
Although we’re nearly neighbors (I live in Silver Spring and she hails from Bethesda) I’ve never met Katie Ledecky but I’ve never seen anyone say an unkind word about her. I heard one reporter call her “the smiling assassin” saying that she’s so likeable she completely disarms her competition until she gets in the pool where her competitive desire simply kills them. Another great American swimmer, Missy Franklin (who finished third to Ledecky in the 200) said, “It’s just awesome to sit back and watch her go.” Sadly, few of us are.
In a sports obsessed world, Katie Ledecky should be a superstar. If you are a sports fan, she should be topic numbers one through five in every conversation that has any relationship to sports today. Unfortunately, that won’t be the case.
Todd
Update: Ledecky not only won the gold in the 800m completing the “Ledecky” Slam but shattered her own world record in the process. Congrats!
· 11/12/2019