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Katie is named USA Female Athlete of the Olympic Games!

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Katie is named USA Female Athlete of the Olympic Games!

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Michael Phelps was also honored 🏅💪🐐🐐

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WASHINGTON - After a dominant performance in Rio, swimmer Katie Ledecky won Female Athlete of the Olympic Games at an award show featuring Olympians and Paralympians on Wednesday night.

Ledecky wore one of her gold medals on the red carpet at the 2016 Team USA Awards presented by Dow, Best of the Games held at Georgetown's McDonough Arena. In Rio, she won gold in the 200, 400 and 800 freestyle events and the 4x200 freestyle relay. Her silver came as part of the 4x100 free relay. She was the first woman to sweep the 200, 400 and 800 freestyles in 48 years.

In recent weeks, Ledecky moved from her family's home in Bethesda, Md., to Stanford, where she's starting her freshman year. She took three weeks off from training but is now with her Stanford team. "It feels good to be back in the water," Ledecky said.

She's training with her Rio Olympic teammate Simone Manuel, the gold medalist in the women's 100 meters who also won gold on the 4x100 medley relay. Manuel is an all-American and NCAA champion on the Stanford team.

Manuel says she gave some advice to Ledecky about what to expect at Stanford. "But Katie doesn't really need it," Manuel said. "She's definitely prepared. When you go to Stanford, you usually know what you're getting into. I definitely gave her advice on what classes to take and if she ever needs anything, come talk to me. She's doing just fine."
What's next for Katie Ledecky? The toughest event in swimming
Another Olympic swimmer, Michael Phelps, was named Male Athlete of the Olympic Games. Phelps, 31, capped his incredible career with six medals in Rio - five gold and one silver. He brought his career total to a record 28 total medals, including 23 gold.

"It was the cherry on top of the cake that I wanted," Phelps said in Rio. "I couldn't be happier with how things ended."

He repeatedly has said Rio was his last Olympics. These days he's traveling the world with his infant son Boomer and fiancée Nicole Johnson.

He wasn't at the ceremony Wednesday night because he was at the Ryder Cup in Chaska, Minn., where he played in a celebrity match-play tournament at Hazeltine National Golf Club.

Award winners were selected through a combination of fan votes and votes from representatives of national governing bodies and a panel of media members.

Other award winners include:

Brad Snyder, Male Athlete of the Paralympic Games

Tatyana McFadden, Female Athlete of the Paralympic Games

Adam Krikorian, women's water polo, Coach of the Games

North Baltimore Aquatic Club, Building Dreams Award

Jesse Owens Olympic Spirit Award bestowed posthumously to Muhammad Ali

Women's sitting volleyball, Team of the Paralympic Games

Women's gymnastics, Team of the Olympic Games

The awards show will be broadcast on NBC Sports Network on Oct. 4.
PHOTOS: OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC ATHLETES ON THE RED CARPET

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Katie Ledecky wins Female Athlete of the Olympic Games

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After dominating Rio, swimmer Katie Ledecky won Female Athlete of the Olympic Games on Wednesday.

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Baseball champ Bryce Harper wears Katie's swim cap in victory celebration!

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Baseball champ Bryce Harper wears Katie's swim cap in victory celebration!

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When Katie Ledecky threw out the first pitch at a Nationals game last month, Bryce Harper was the one who got to hold all of her medals. The moment was pure gold as Harper dutifully stood next to Ledecky with the medals around his arms.

On Wednesday, in a video shared by Stephen Whyno of the Associated Press, Ledecky said that after Harper held her medals, she sent him a thank you note along with a swim cap. She said that she "told him maybe it could help contain his hair as he was rounding third base."

But Harper didn't wear it on the field. He instead chose to wear the cap to protect his hair from the beer and champagne that was dumped on him when the Nationals clinched the NL East.

Ledecky said she was "very honored" that Harper put her cap to use in the celebration.

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Katie Ledecky explains how Bryce Harper got her swim cap

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Ledecky is honored Harper wore her cap to celebrate.

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Katie Ledecky, Age 9, Asks for Michael Phelps's Autograph

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Katie Ledecky, Age 9, Asks for Michael Phelps's Autograph

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They're both from Maryland!

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Having already won gold in both the 200m and 400m freestyle and silver in the 4x100m freestyle relay in Rio, Katie Ledecky is well on her way to becoming the next Michael Phelps. Her incredibly fast times and strong, loping stroke have become her signature, a style some describe as a masculine. NBC commentator Rowdy Gaines said it best, however, when he snapped that sports analysts, teammates, and fans should stop saying she "swims like a man... She swims like Katie Ledecky, for crying out loud."

Even Phelps is blown away by her strength in the pool. "She knows what she's doing, and it's fun to watch her," he told NBC Sports.

Phelps and Ledecky were on the 2012 London Olympic team together, back when Ledecky won gold in the 800m freestyle and Phelps made history by becoming the most decorated Olympian ever.

Five years before making the 2012 team, Ledecky met Phelps-at an autograph signing in 2006.

Phelps couldn't have known at the time, but he was coming face to face with the 9-year-old who would also go on to become the next "future of USA swimming." That meeting, with one of her self-described "idols," may have even been part of Ledecky's inspiration to pursue a career in competitive swimming and to follow her own Olympic dreams.

And in those 10 years Ledecky has made quite a name for herself.

Last year, at the world championships in Russia, she became the first swimmer ever to sweep the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle in international competition. In her first individual event in Rio, Ledecky set a new Olympic record in a qualifier and then went on to win the event with a world record time-one that was almost five seconds ahead of the silver-medal finisher.

But another photo recently came out of the Ledecky family archives, one that would have allowed her to have an equally cute #TBT shot had she excelled in another sport: basketball.

In 1999, Ledecky met another famous Olympian, Michael Jordan, at a Washington Wizards game.

Her uncle, a stakeholder in both the Wizards and Washington Capitals, brought his then-2-year-old niece to meet the two-time Olympic gold medalist (Jordan won gold in the 1984 Los Angeles and 1992 Barcelona Games).

While the meeting likely didn't have the same inspirational effect on Ledecky as meeting Phelps, it just goes to show that the Washington, D.C. native has been rubbing elbows with world-class talent for nearly two decades.

She was even featured on the Today show at 16 months old!

All right, she wasn't featured on the Today show, but her brief cameo can now been seen as some very intense foreshadowing for Olympic greatness.

Watch Ledecky take on the competition again in the women's 800m freestyle, Thursday, Aug. 11 at 12:26 p.m. ET.
How to Live Stream 2016 Rio Olympics Swimming:
NBCUniversal's networks and digital platforms will be showing nearly 7,000 hours of programing over 19 days during the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app will also live stream coverage of the Games for pay TV subscribers via TV Everywhere. You can download the NBC Sports app to your Android TV, Apple TV, Xbox, or Roku-or use the iOS, Android, or Windows Phone apps.

You can also live stream Olympic matches from NBC .

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The Day Michael Phelps Saw Swimming's Future: 9-Year-Old Katie Ledecky

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Having already won gold in both the 200m and 400m freestyle and silver in the 4x100m freestyle relay in Rio, Katie Ledecky is well on her way to becoming the next Michael Phelps . Her incredibly fast times and strong, loping stroke have become her signature, a style some describe as a masculine.

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RIO DE JANEIRO -- Late in the Olympic 200-meter freestyle final, Katie Ledecky began to feel nausea swelling up from her stomach to her throat.

It was an inopportune moment. Ledecky had a shot to win the race that is, for her, the object that is different from all the others. The 200 is her "off" event, the one in which Ledecky wasn't a world-record holder or a prohibitive favorite, the one in which she was swimming to win and not for a specific time goal. Five of the 10 top all-time performers in the distance were in Tuesday night's eight-woman field.

To Ledecky's left, Sweden's Sarah Sjostrom was surfing her wave off the last turn. "I didn't think I was going to be that close," Sjostrom said. "I got some extra speed for free."

Ledecky burped. The feeling passed. She drove herself to the wall.

"Everything was hurting and I knew I wasn't going to be able to see the field in the last 50, so I just had to dig deep and do my own thing," she said. "When I saw it for real on the scoreboard, it all kind of sank in then.

"The really tough one's done."

Ledecky collected her second individual gold medal of the Rio Games and her third overall, ticking off ambitions like so many items on a shopping list. Her time of 1:53.73 fell just short of fellow American Allison Schmitt's Olympic record.

It was simply good enough, an unusual admission for this unusually driven athlete. The 400 freestyle gold and 400 freestyle relay silver were predictable treasures, but the shorter distance tests her like no other.

"The 200 is such a more stressful event for me than the 400 or the 800, just because I can't really settle into my rhythm," Ledecky said. "One mistake and you're done. It just feels good that it's over."

Her longtime coach, Bruce Gemmell, said he got this text after the race from his son Andrew, a distance and open water swimmer who trains with Ledecky: I've seen her practice those last 50 over and over and over.

The .35 of a second that made the difference between Ledecky and Sjostrom was carved from those reps. And since no detail is too small in this hybrid of distance and sprint, it's probably a good thing that Ledecky had practice at surviving a surge of queasiness, as well.

Gemmell told the story of an unnamed male swimmer who, after one especially draining workout at altitude at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, turned to Ledecky and said, "That was so hard, I feel like throwing up." To which she replied, "I feel that way three times a week." Tuesday, she said the bilious feeling made her mad, and irritation made her faster.

Her two remaining events, the 800 freestyle relay and the 800 itself, in which Ledecky has broken her own world record three times since she set it in 2013, sits at the end of the meet, waiting for her to claim it. Assuming she does, she will complete a sweep accomplished only by Debbie Meyer in 1968.

A champion's postrace duties, from media to anti-doping, can drag on for a while. Ledecky said athlete-to-athlete, the first question the morning after is often how much rest they got. "It's hard to sleep after a great performance," Ledecky said. She got a nap Tuesday morning and she'll adjust.

She's getting a lot of practice at staying up past her bedtime this week.

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Say no more: Katie Ledecky is really that good

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Katie Ledecky's gritty 200-meter freestyle win Tuesday night again showed there isn't much that can rattle the sport's most dominant female swimmer -- not even a down-the-stretch burp.

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Katie Ledecky wins gold in women's 200 Free in Rio

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Katie Ledecky wins gold in women's 200 Free in Rio

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RIO DE JANEIRO - It's time to pencil Katie Ledecky's name into the record book.

The 19-year-old superstar freestyle swimmer turned in perhaps her most impressive race of these Olympics, taking gold in her weakest individual event of the week, the women's 200-meter freestyle.

Ledecky won in 1:53.73, a bruising time in a bruising race. She edged out Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden, who finished in 1:54.08. Australia's Emma McKeon took the bronze. What was perhaps most impressive was the final 25 meters or so, as Ledecky dug deep to fend off Sjostrom's final push.

"I did come pretty close to throwing up during that last 50," Ledecky said, admitting that she let a burp escape. "I knew I just needed to get my hand on the wall and be done. Everything was hurting. ... I just had to dig deep and do my own thing. I had no idea whether I touched first. ... I was done when I touched the wall. I knew I'd given it everything I had to.

"I wasn't surprised, but kind of relieved (to touch the wall). The 200 is more stressful for me than the 400 and the 800 because I can't really settle into my rhythm. It's just, one mistake and you're done."
Armour: USA women gymnasts throw golden Rio Olympic party
That's why this 200 freestyle event was so important, so critical, and such a source of pride for Ledecky. It's basically a long sprint, and Ledecky began her swimming career by dominating distance events, showing a mastery not seen in decades. She's undefeated in major international competition in individual events; she's won 14 gold medals in 14 attempts. Ledecky is the current world record-holder in the 400, 800 and 1,500 freestyles. And she's worked on going down from there, to the 200 and even at times the 100 (she anchored the women's 4x100 silver medal-winning relay on Saturday).

"She's the queen of freestyle," said Sjostrom, the silver medalist. "I feel like I really need to be 100% ready mentally and everything before I go to a race (against her)."

So far these Games, Ledecky is 2-for-2 in individual events. With just the 800 free remaining, Ledecky will likely become just the second female Olympian in history to win three individual freestyle gold medals in the same Games. Only Debbie Meyer (1968) has accomplished the feat.

Ledecky is the third woman and sixth swimmer to win gold in both the 200 and 400 freestyle at the same Olympics. The other two women were Meyer and Australia's Shane Gould in 1972.

"I'm just honored to be part of the tradition of American freestyle swimming, and I want to make them proud," Ledecky said. "(Debbie) told me she wanted me to do it. I don't want to let (her) down."

"We set some goals three years ago," said Bruce Gemmell, Ledecky's personal coach. "Seeing that we're two-thirds of the way there, that's very, very rewarding."

Ledecky will next swim Thursday afternoon in her 800 free preliminary heat, an event that likely will not bring with it the risk of vomiting. Not that the feeling is a bad thing - at least not for Ledecky. Her comments Tuesday night reminded Gemmell of a funny story that illustrates not only her tireless work ethic, but also how hard she pushes herself physically every day to prepare for magical moments like this.

"We were in the Olympic Training Center in the fall or winter, and one of the male athletes was training with her," Gemmell said. "He turned to her and said something like, 'That was so hard I feel like I'm going to throw up.' Her reply was, 'I feel that way about three times a week.'

Gemmell chuckled.

"So, that's not surprising," he said.

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Katie Ledecky wins gold in women's 200 free

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Katie Ledecky is 2-for-2 in her individual events at the Rio Olympics.

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Katie Ledecky Smashes Her Own World Record in 400 Freestyle at Rio

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Katie Ledecky Smashes Her Own World Record in 400 Freestyle at Rio

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She now owns the 10 fastest performances in the 400.

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Katie Ledecky Smashes Her Own World Record in 400 Freestyle (Published 2016)

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Another day, another milestone for Katie Ledecky, who won her second medal, and first gold, of the Rio Games on Sunday night in the 400-meter freestyle.

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The New York Times Magazine Olympics Issue 

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The New York Times Magazine Olympics Issue 

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"The most dominant swimmer in the pool this summer is 19-year-old Katie Ledecky. The question isn’t whether she’ll win, but by how much."

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The peerless swimmer Katie Ledecky; a photo essay of Olympians and their heroes; the sprinter Justin Gatlin’s comeback; how Boston’s citizens fought to reject their city’s bid; and 10 writers on their memories of Games past.

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Katie Breaks 1500m Freestyle World Record, 2014

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Katie Breaks 1500m Freestyle World Record, 2014

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"The race is called the 1500-meter freestyle, but it won't really be a race. Katie Ledecky will be all by herself"

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Katie wins gold in 800m at 2012 Olympics

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Katie wins gold in 800m at 2012 Olympics

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She was just 15.

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She lowered Janet Evans' American record of 8:16.22 set on Aug. 20, 1989 -- eight years before Ledecky was born. Already the youngest swimmer on the U.S. team, Ledecky became the second-youngest American woman to win an individual gold medal.

Beth Botsford was 15 years and 62 days when she won the 100 backstroke at the 1996 Atlanta Games; Ledecky is 15 years and 139 days.

"To break that record is really cool and really special," she said about Evans' mark.

Evans tweeted her congratulations to Ledecky after the race: "Amazing swim, so proud of her for bringing distance gold back to the US!"

Ledecky described Evans as someone she's looked up to, having watched her races on the Internet. Evans won the 800 free at the 1988 Seoul Olympics -- as a 16-year-old -- and again in 1992 in Barcelona.

"They're really neat to watch," she said.

Ledecky is the first U.S. woman to win the event since Brooke Bennett picked up where Evans left off in winning back-to-back titles in 1996 and 2000.

"Welcome to the gold medal club," Bennett tweeted to Ledecky. "That was incredible to watch."

Ledecky seemingly came out of nowhere to claim a spot on the U.S. team, and she nearly took out a world record in her first Olympics. She was ahead of Adlington's record pace (8:14.10) from the Beijing Games until the last 15 meters of a race she thoroughly dominated.

"She was absolutely amazing," said Adlington, who settled for bronze in 8:20.32. "That time is unbelievable. She has got a bright career ahead of her."

Mireia Belmonte Garcia of Spain took the silver in 8:18.76.

Ledecky watched Franklin and Phelps win gold medals before her only race of the Games.

"I got really pumped up when I saw that Missy and Michael had really good swims," the youngster said. "I was ready to scream when I saw Missy's race, but I kept it to myself and used it as extra energy."

Ledecky dropped 5.15 seconds from her time of 8.19.78 at last month's U.S. trials, when she broke the trials record and won by 2.09 seconds. She just missed making the team in the 400 free, having broken Evans' national age group record while finishing third.

"My game plan has always been go out fast but not too fast because it'll affect me later on in the race," Ledecky said about her Olympic win. "I tried to go out a little more controlled, but I just got so excited and started racing. I've been working on that back half so I was able to come home hard."

Ledecky's big time drop combined with questions about the use of performance-enhancing drugs directed at 16-year-old Ye Shiwen of China after she won two golds at these Games prompted a reporter to ask the American if she was cheating.

"It's totally false," Ledecky answered calmly. "I just put in a lot of hard work this past year. Just progressively setting short-term and long-term goals. I've been dropping time progressively."

She trains with Curl-Burke Swim Club based in the northern Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., area. Ledecky attends Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda.

"I'm really excited to get back there," she said. "They had a little Olympic viewing party there. I can't imagine how excited they are. I'm really thankful for their support."

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U.S. 15-year-old Ledecky wins 800-meter free

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American 15-year-old Katie Ledecky won the 800-meter freestyle at the London Olympics on Friday.

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How Katie Ledecky became better at swimming than anyone is at anything 

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How Katie Ledecky became better at swimming than anyone is at anything 

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Olympics * At 20, the American may be best female swimmer ever.

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In many of her biggest races, Katie Ledecky is leading before she even touches the water.

In the 800-meter freestyle final at the 2012 London Olympics, which produced her first Olympic gold medal; in six of her nine individual swims at the 2015 world championships, where she pulled off an unprecedented sweep of the 200 through 1,500 freestyles; in the 800 free final at the 2014 Pan Pacific Championships, a world record; and the finals of both the 400 and 800 free at the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials — in all of those races, and in many others, Ledecky was the first swimmer off the blocks, her "reaction time" (the interval between the starter's gun and the instant her feet leave the blocks) fastest in the field.

It is not a skill Ledecky, 19, needs or cares about. There isn't much benefit in beating opponents off the blocks by a couple hundredths of a second when you typically win your core events by several seconds, or even tens of seconds. And where fast starts are a part of her practice routine, it is only in the larger context of the first 15 meters as a whole.

But as a symbol of Ledecky's sheer athletic brilliance, her perfection of the first movement of a race is illustrative. Getting off the blocks fast requires some combination of hard work, athleticism, intense focus and perfectionism. And try as people might to find some simple explanation for Ledecky's dominance of swimming, the truth is more complex, and it lies somewhere in that recipe.

"This is a one-in-a-billion human being," said Washington Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis, a longtime friend and associate of Ledecky's family. "She has a very special family, and she's an incredibly gifted person — with a high, high self-actualization and self-awareness, otherworldly good instincts and intelligence, a gifted physiognomy, plus an incredible drive to be the best. And it's all natural."

As Ledecky prepares to launch herself into the U.S. Olympic trials in Omaha, Neb., with the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics looming six weeks in the distance, she already may be the most dominant athlete in sports, as measured by the gap between her and everyone else in her discipline. At the 2015 worlds, against the best competition the globe could offer, she won the 1,500 freestyle by more than 14 seconds and the 800 free by more than 10. When she set the most recent of her 11 world records, in the 800 free at a meet in Austin in January, her margin of victory was 17.81 seconds.

Usain Bolt is occasionally beaten. Serena Williams doesn't win every Grand Slam. Stephen Curry goes 5 for 20 now and again. But Ledecky has swum in 12 individual finals at major international meets, and has never lost.

"She's the greatest athlete in the world today by far," said Michael J. Joyner, an anesthesiologist and researcher for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, specializing in human performance and physiology. "She's dominating by the widest margin in international sport, winning by 1 or 2 percent. If [a runner] won the 10,000 meters by that wide a margin, they'd win by 100 meters. One or 2 percent in the Tour de France, over about 80 hours of racing, would be 30 or 40 minutes. It's just absolutely remarkable."

The people who coach her, train with her and race against her are quietly bracing for another monster summer from Ledecky, with the question not a matter of wins and losses but how much faster she can possibly go.

"If she never goes faster, she's already an all-time incredible performer," said David Marsh, head coach of the 2016 U.S. women's national team. "But the reality is, knowing she has her sights set on Omaha and Rio, I think we may see some great swims."

She is already considered the best female swimmer in the world at the moment, but with a representative showing in Rio — where she has a legitimate shot at five medals, including four golds, with perhaps a world record or two sprinkled in — she would, before the age of 20, enter the conversation of the best ever.

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Olympics: How Katie Ledecky became better at swimming than anyone is at anything

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In many of her biggest races, Katie Ledecky is leading before she even touches the water. In th

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"Ledecky was the first-ever swimmer to win the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle events at a single world championships. When she did it in 2015, it became known as the 'Ledecky Slam.'"

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What Makes Katie Ledecky So Remarkable? (ESPN)

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What Makes Katie Ledecky So Remarkable? (ESPN)

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LEDECKY QUICKLY CAME to terms with the unvarying schedule not uncommon for elite swimmers. But beating the clock in distance swimming, as she has, requires enduring tedium few athletes experience. Hour after hour, a swimmer sees little but the black lane line on the bottom of a pool, hears little other than innermost thoughts and the muffled sound of a coach demanding more effort.

The 4:05 a.m. wake-ups; the 20-minute predawn drives to the pool with one of her parents; the two pieces of toast with peanut butter and a banana she uses as fuel for 4 miles of swimming in 90 minutes beginning at 5 a.m.; the chocolate milk immediately after practice; the bacon-cheese-tomato omelet she eats in the car on the way home, a breakfast her mother has ordered so frequently from the same local restaurant, Ize's, that its owners have named it Katie's Gold Medal Omelet; then swim another 5 miles in the afternoon after school.

Day after day, year after year.

"I don't think it's monotonous," Ledecky said, "because Bruce does a great job of mixing up the workouts, and it's a very competitive training atmosphere every day."

Gemmell, 55, who has a perpetually wry expression, gave up a 15-year career as a mechanical engineer to coach swimming. He took over as head coach at Nation's Capital after Suguiyama moved to Cal-Berkeley as an assistant coach two months after the 2012 Olympics. Gemmell insists that there was no anxiety in suddenly being in charge of an Olympic champion whom his Michigan mentor, Jon Urbanchek, had raved about. The timing also worked in his favor.

"With the Olympic cycle, everything is a little down right afterwards, so there was no immediate pressure for her to perform," Gemmell said.

Except Ledecky always wants to perform, especially in practice. To her, being very competitive means training with men and giving them no quarter. Other elite female swimmers, going back to Meyer, have flourished in similar environments where they held their own or more against men. Meyer's measuring stick was Mike Burton, the 1,500-meter Olympic champion in 1968 and 1972.

"I used to race Mike in practice all the time," Meyer said. "I wanted to beat him. I see that in Katie -- the challenging, the wanting to work hard all the time, the pushing yourself every day."

Yet what Ledecky does against some of the top male swimmers in the United States leaves many awestruck.

Before going to a late winter training camp at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Ledecky also would be present, Olympic gold-medal freestyler Conor Dwyer may or may not have been joking when he said, "I'm a little worried. I don't want to be getting my butt kicked by a 19-year-old girl."

Michael Phelps, the greatest swimmer in history, has gone to several of those OTC camps at the same time as Ledecky. He swears the stories of her taking down the men there are true. "She'll literally beat all the guys in the workout, and it looks like it's nothing, like she is barely breathing," Phelps said.

No one suggests she could win races against top men. But there are beatdowns in practice, especially if she senses the guys are struggling, and she shifts into predator mode.

"You see that in high-level competitors," Phelps said. "If there's an ounce of blood in the water, they're going to try to destroy you as much as they can."

Ledecky's brother, Michael, who was a top-10 finisher in the 100-yard freestyle at the National Catholic High School Championships, was one of her first prey. She began beating him occasionally when she was 11, and he was 14. The key thing is Katie never was afraid to try, and there never was a question of hurting some guy's feelings.

"I never really pay attention to their emotions," she said. "I try not to let that get to me at all. I know it can be hard on them. I take it just as hard if they beat me."

That pitiless attitude is a stark contrast from the relentless generosity that seems to mark the rest of her life. "In the water, she is a stone-cold racer," Suguiyama said. "Out of the water, she is as sweet as she can be."

From signing autographs and taking selfies with kids to visiting wounded warriors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, to the appreciative look and thank-you she gave Gemmell after setting her first world record in 2013, Ledecky also impresses friends, rivals and strangers out of the pool.

"Katie Ledecky is the student that takes 20 credits a semester at Harvard and gets a 4.0 every semester -- and nobody likes that person," said Elizabeth Beisel, a 2012 Olympic silver and bronze medalist. "But everybody loves Katie Ledecky. You just love to love Katie."

"So calm, so reserved, so humble," teammate DiRado said. "She's a goofy, sweet, smart girl."

She keeps the goofy side for good friends and teammates. She is close to sprinter Simone Manuel, who is as outgoing as Ledecky is reserved. Before the 1,500 final at the 2013 worlds, Ledecky laughed herself nearly silly as Manuel danced around the team room. That could happen again in Rio, where the 20-year-old Manuel, soon to be Ledecky's Stanford teammate, earned spots in the 50 and 100 freestyles.

"We dance together, we sing together, and I think it just kind of keeps her relaxed and reminds her to just have fun -- no pressure, you're a good swimmer, just go fast," Manuel said.

Ledecky's imitation of teammate Tyler Clary in the rookie skits at the 2012 Olympic training camp is said to have made her, at barely 15, the star of the show.

Those kinds of moments have helped persuade Ledecky to resist the temptation of becoming awash in money, which would abolish her college eligibility. Her intention now is to use all four years at Stanford. Being part of a team means a lot to her.

Still, it's not pocket change we are talking about here. When asked about Ledecky's earning potential leading up to the Rio Games, Olympic sports marketing expert Bob Dorfman of Baker Street Advertising told ESPN.com after Ledecky's performance at the 2015 worlds that she could make up to $4 million before the Games if she turned pro. After her performances at the U.S. trials, he upped the ante.

"With a strong shot at four golds, Ledecky would be the aquatic darling of the Games and could command as much as $5 million annually in endorsement income by turning pro -- especially given that at just age 19, she has the opportunity to win gold in two, or even three more Olympic games and could become the female Michael Phelps," Dorfman said in an email. "Obviously the challenge is maintaining high visibility during non-Olympic years, but with her personality and likability, combined with the ever-growing influence of social media, the potential for longer-term deals is there."

That Ledecky has replaced London Olympic darling Missy Franklin as the face of U.S. women's swimming was evident at trials. On the front of Omaha's CenturyLink Center were two four-story-high photo murals. One was of Phelps. The other was of Ledecky.

"I took a selfie with it," she said. "Yeah, it's cool." But you won't find the selfie on her Twitter, Instagram or Facebook feeds.

Time magazine named her one of its 100 Most Influential People of 2016, a list that also included Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Stephen Curry, Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel. Vogue magazine featured her with photographs by Annie Leibovitz. The Washington Post has what is essentially a Ledecky beat.

"I try not to pay attention to all the attention," Ledecky said.

Agents have approached her parents via USA Swimming. The reply has been a polite "no."

"It's never something that has entered my mind or I really want to pursue at this moment," Katie said. "I want to go to college, get my education and swim in college. I'm not concerned about money at this point. I enjoy representing my team, my country, my family, myself. I don't think at my age I need to represent something more than that."

In her family, learning counts higher than anything else. Mary Gen's father, Bud, was a doctor who was highly decorated (two Bronze Stars, Silver Star, Purple Heart) for his World War II service as a naval combat surgeon. Dave's father, Jaromir, came to the United States from Czechoslovakia at age 19 to study and was advised by his father to stay when the Soviet occupiers cracked down on his homeland. Jaromir wound up with a bachelor's degree from Rutgers and an MBA and a doctorate in economics from New York University. He was in the process of teaching himself Swedish, his eighth language, at the time of his death.

Dave Ledecky went to Harvard, then Yale Law School. His brother, Jon, co-owner of the New York Islanders, got his undergrad and MBA degrees from Harvard, at which he has endowed fellowships in the names of his mother and father.

"The way our parents believe in education, it was a no-brainer Katie wasn't going to turn professional," Dave Ledecky said.

BEFORE THE 2012 Olympics, Suguiyama had asked Ledecky what her goal was.

"To make the Olympic team," she said with no hesitation.

"OK," he answered, "but let's keep that to ourselves."

He had tinkered with Ledecky's mechanics in the spring and summer of 2011, getting her to breathe just on the right side instead of bilaterally, finding a way for her to use her legs more than most female distance swimmers did at the time. "I wanted to take advantage of her strength and the controlled fury with which she swims sometimes," Suguiyama said.

The result was a stroke with a "hitch" or "gallop," where the left arm glides slightly longer atop the water than the right, a motion that Phelps and others say looks like a man's stroke. It worked because Ledecky had a sense of timing so refined she knew how much longer to keep her left arm gliding and when to move her hips to get the full stroke and to avoid drag after finishing the breathing phase.

"She is very connected, meaning her upper body and lower body work in unison," said Bob Bowman, Phelps' coach for 20 years. "Therefore, she is very efficient."

The result would be something Gemmell now describes in terms he believes originated with Olympic champion Matt Biondi. "She grabs water and pulls like a rock climber," Gemmell said. "Everyone else's hand moves through the water. She moves her body past her hand."

At 14, as she began to mature physically, Ledecky started shredding her personal bests in the 800 meters. Her times went from 9:02.70 to 8:36.05 over a four-meet span from a dual meet in May 2011 to the junior national championships she dominated in August.

By the next year, her 800 time would drop to 8:14.63 in the Olympic final. She swam that fast a few days after John Leonard of the U.S., executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, voiced his suspicions about China's Ye Shiwen, then 16, who won the 400 IM in a world-record time and swam the final 50 meters faster than men's winner Ryan Lochte of the United States. "Unbelievable" and "disturbing," said Leonard, comments that opened the door for journalists to question Ledecky about performance-enhancing drugs since, like Shiwen, she was a relative unknown coming into London. Within minutes of her victory, Ledecky was asked whether she doped.

"Was I shocked by the question? Sort of," she said. "It was almost like a laughable matter because I just wouldn't do it.

"I could understand it, and I appreciate the concern people have for it. I think it was almost an honor -- that's kind of the approach we decided to take -- it's like an honor that people are questioning it because that means they think you did something special or out of the world."

German TV network ZDF brought up the issue again at last year's worlds, where Ledecky dominated the competition while swimming 6,200 meters in 10 races, including a 200 semifinal barely a half-hour after she set a world record in the 1,500.

"Is that humanly possible?" the network's reporter asked German head coach Henning Lambertz.

"It obviously is, but it is definitely astonishing how she absorbs all this," Lambertz replied.

"Does that raise question marks?" the reporter continued.

"Not with me," Lambertz answered.

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency statistics show Ledecky has undergone 52 doping controls beginning in 2012, with 15 so far this year. Those numbers include all in- and out-of-competition testing on U.S. athletes conducted under USADA's testing program, as well as USADA-requested tests conducted by other testing agencies on U.S. athletes training internationally.

All of Ledecky's tests through USADA and at international competitions outside the United States have come back negative. She understands that even that does not answer all doubts, given past examples of athletes such as Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong beating the tests through clever subterfuge.

"It's annoying and frustrating when you see athletes that do dope and sometimes they're not punished harshly enough," she said. "It has never crossed my mind to dope. It's not who I am."

SWIMMING CAN BE a hard sport to watch. Much of the action is water splashing, with the churn of arms and legs in shorter races roiling the pool like gale-force winds. Even sitting at no angle from the finish line, even with a live broadcast on a large video screen, a spectator frequently cannot determine the results.

Athletes often are in a similar position of uncertainty until they lift their goggles and squint through humid, chlorinated air in a search for their time and place on an electronic scoreboard at the other end of the pool. After 50 or 100 or 1,500 meters, when swimmers' capped-and-goggled heads have made their faces nearly invisible to spectators, the end of the race is the first time in 20-odd seconds or nearly 15 minutes when there is a chance to see any emotion or strain on their faces.

Triumph usually brings a smile, a scream, a punch of the water, a thumbs-up -- maybe all those reactions -- then a hug for a competitor in an adjacent lane. Other expressions are rare, even more so if the swimmer is Katie Ledecky. She gets plenty of chances to celebrate, having won every significant freestyle race in an Olympic-length pool, beginning with the 2012 London Olympics, where tears rolled down her face during the medal ceremony. But she usually does not have a demonstrative personality in public.

Yet there have been at least two other moments when Ledecky let the whole world see what she was feeling.

The first came at the 2014 Pan Pacific Championships in Australia. In abominable weather conditions during the four-day outdoor meet, she won the 200, 400 (breaking her own world record), 800 and 1,500 freestyles, swum the 100 free heats and a leg of the winning 4x200 relay. After setting another world record in that 1,500 on the meet's final day, Katie's face contorted in a grimace -- cheeks puffing, eyes squinched - for nearly a minute. "The good news," a TV commentator said, "is she actually looks as if she was in pain."

Gemmell saw something else. "All those races, the weather, and she didn't bat an eye," he said. "That's when I was kind of like, `This girl's pretty good.'"

The second moment was at the 2015 World Championships, in Kazan, Russia, where she had the no-time-to-rest double of the 1,500 final and 200 semifinal. Gemmell and Ledecky discussed the risk of that challenge -- she could be too tired from the 1,500 to make the 200 final. "She looked at me incredulously and said, `That's not going to happen,''' he recalled.

Gemmell counseled her to swim the longer race conservatively. She already had broken her 1,500 world record in the prelims, and had an enormous edge over the competition. At the end of the final, Ledecky had a quizzical look on her face -- part grin, part guilt -- as she made eye contact with the coach. She had won by 14.66 seconds, and broken her day-old world mark by 2.23. "I think she just kind of amazes herself every once in a while," Evans said. In the 200 semifinal 32 minutes later, she rallied from behind to qualify sixth overall and won the final a day later.

That fearless approach is what distinguishes Ledecky from many other distance swimmers.

"Bruce says, `Every race is a sprint; some people sprint longer than others," she explained. At the Olympic trials, Ledecky led every lap of her seven races except for the first two in the 200 final. In the 400 and 800 finals, the outcome essentially was decided after 50 meters, but Ledecky held the fans' interest by staying ahead of the red line on the video screen that shows world record pace for most of each race. Red-lining is just the way she swims.

"I take it out fast to challenge myself to bring it home faster," she said.

In January, Ledecky swam faster in both halves of a world-record 800 - out in 4:03.22, back in 4:03.46 - than Evans had while setting a world record for the 400 (4:03.85) that stood from 1988 until 2009. "There was a point people thought no woman would ever break it," Bowman said. And then Katie goes 4:03-4:03. When people ask me what is the most amazing swim I've ever seen, before that I probably would have said Michael's 400 IM at Beijing [2008 Olympics], but now what Katie did might be it."

There is a perfect, repetitive symmetry about 4:03-4:03. It is who Katie Ledecky is. Amazing. Over and over again.

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The 19-year-old Olympic champion and world-record holder is redefining women's freestyle swimming, winning by unprecedented margins, on her own terms.

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Slightly embarrassing, yet very awesome video by USA Swimming.

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2016 USA Olympic Swim Team Carpool Karaoke