PARIS — Katie Ledecky was less than an hour removed from her Olympic four-peat when her mind crept, deviously, toward the future.
She had just clinched her fourth and final medal of these 2024 Paris Games. She’d pushed her body to limits. She had reached the stage of an Olympic cycle when most swimmers celebrate, reflect, and unwind. She sat next to Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, who said: “I’m definitely taking a big, big break.”
She had also reached an age, 27, when many would retire.
But not Ledecky. “I’ve kinda been dreading this break,” she said.
She will take one, reluctantly, but “I have no idea how long it’s gonna be,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll find my way back to the pool pretty soon.”
She had just hit the highest of highs, and accomplished Herculean things, but she was already thinking about accomplishing more. That, in a nutshell, is Katie Ledecky, 14-time Olympic medalist, nine-time champion. She understands the importance of savoring moments and reflecting. But she will also spend the coming days and months, “dare I say, learn[ing] from this past year and see[ing] where I can be better in the future,” she said. “That’s what’s helped me get to this point, continuing to reset after these meets, and find ways to set new goals.” That’s what she’ll do after Paris.
And yes, she is eyeing Los Angeles. She’ll be 31 by the time the Summer Olympics arrive on home soil for the first time in her life. She has every intention of being there.
“I’ve been consistent over these last few months, and last few years, in saying that I would love to compete in LA,” she said here Wednesday. “And that hasn’t changed.”
Three days later, and some 20 minutes after the four-peat, she was asked specifically about a five-peat.
“I’d love to,” she said.
“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 in a distance event beyond their 27th birthday — before Ledecky did twice this week.
But she wants to “give it everything I have for as long as I have left in me,” she said Saturday.
Both Wednesday and Saturday, 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.
“But, yeah, I don’t feel like I’m close to being finished in the sport yet,” Ledecky said.
She is, on the contrary, as infatuated with the sport as ever. “I love the pool. I love the water,” she said Saturday. She also loves the daily grind. “I probably enjoy the training more than the racing,” she said. “Honestly, if I could go back to training on Sept. 1, and just train all fall, I’ll be one happy camper.”
There are other life things on her post-Paris checklist. She will, of course, “take a little breather.” She’ll “kick up [her] feet,” and visit family, particularly her grandmother.
But before long, she knows the feeling will come: “Ah, I just wanna get in the pool.”
She will do it, in small part, with her eyes on 2028. “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 Nesty, 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.’”