Katie Ledecky

popular Wiki of the Day

pWotD Episode 2648: Katie Ledecky
Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.
With 610,582 views on Thursday, 1 August 2024 our article of the day is Katie Ledecky.
Kathleen Genevieve Ledecky ( lə-DEH-kee; born March 17, 1997) is an American competitive swimmer. She has won eight Olympic gold medals and 21 world championship gold medals, the most in history for a female swimmer. With 13 medals, she is also the most decorated female American Olympian in history. She has won a world record 16 individual gold medals at the World Aquatics Championships. Ledecky's 8 individual gold medals at the Olympics and 26 overall medals at the World Aquatics Championships are records in women's swimming‌. Ledecky is the world record holder in the women's 800- and 1500-meter freestyle (both long course and short course) as well as the former world record holder in the women's 400-meter freestyle (long course). She also holds the fastest-ever times in the women's 500-, 1000-, and 1650-yard freestyle events. She is widely regarded as the greatest female swimmer of all time and one of the greatest Olympians of all time.
In her international debut at the 2012 London Olympic Games as a 15-year-old, Ledecky unexpectedly won the gold medal in the women's 800-metre freestyle. Four years later, she left Rio de Janeiro as the most decorated female athlete of the 2016 Olympic Games, with four gold medals, one silver medal, and two world records. At the 2020 Olympic Games, Ledecky also emerged as the most decorated U. S. female athlete and became the first American female swimmer to win an individual event in three straight Olympiads. In 2023, she won gold in the 800 meter World Championship, becoming the only swimmer—male or female—to win six World Championship gold medals in the same event. In total, she has won 47 medals (36 golds, 9 silvers, and 2 bronzes) in major international competitions, spanning the Summer Olympics, World Championships, and Pan Pacific Championships. During her career, she has broken sixteen world records.
Ledecky's success has earned her Swimming World's Female World Swimmer of the Year a record-breaking five times. Ledecky was also named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 2017 and 2022, international female Champion of Champions by L'Équipe in 2014 and 2017, United States Olympic Committee Female Athlete of the Year in 2013, 2016 and 2017, Sportswoman of the Year by the Women's Sports Foundation in 2017, and the ESPY Best Female Athlete in 2022. In 2024, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:15 UTC on Friday, 2 August 2024.
For the full current version of the article, see Katie Ledecky on Wikipedia.
This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.
Follow us on Mastodon at @[e-mail].
Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.
Until next time, I'm standard Ivy.