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2020 Summer Olympic Games
23 July – 8 August 2021
Tokyo, Japan
Katie Ledecky will look to become the first United States woman to win five Gold Medals at a single Olympic Games when she participates in a variety of swimming events at Tokyo 2020, set to run from 23 July to 8 August in Japan.
The 24-year-old will compete in the Women’s 200m, 400m, 800m and 1,500m Freestyle, plus the 4×200m Freestyle Relay. Ledecky is already a two-time Olympian (2012 and 2016) and boasts five Golds and one Silver from her trips to London and Rio de Janeiro.
Despite her past success and status as a strong competitor, if not clear favourite, for the above events, Ledecky insists she is focused on personal times and not counting medals: “I never set medal count goals or anything like that because I feel like that’s out of my control,” she explained.
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“I can’t control if someone has some really fast swims and beats me and things like that. So I just tried to focus on my goal times and how I want to swim each of my races.”
Tokyo 2020 also offers Ledecky the chance to finally compete at the Olympics in her strongest event, the 1,500, Freestyle, which had previously only been a Men’s category. The Washington DC-born swimmer holds all of the 10 fastest times in history at that distance.
The 1,500m and 200m finals will be on the same day, July 28, but Ledecky insists she is used to handling a tough workload: “I’m good with it. At that level, I’ve done it at a bunch of meets leading up to it – or very similar kinds of doubles. So I feel like I’m prepared for it and looking forward to it. I know it’ll be challenging, but I think I’m ready for it.”
Ledecky is highly likely to claim Gold at the 1,500m and 800m events, but she faces a genuine threat from Australia’s rising star Ariarne Titmus for the 200m and 400m. At the 2019 World Championships, Titmus chased Ledecky down in the last 50 meters to win the 400m Freestyle.
And at the Australian trials, Titmus came within half a second of Ledecky’s world record in the 400m, and she was 0.11 seconds off the 200m world record, which belongs to Italy’s Federica Pellegrini.
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