Ledecky, Snyder win awards

Katie Ledecky and Kyle Snyder continued their Olympic dominance, winning the U.S. Olympic Committee's Olympic Athlete of the Year honors at the Team USA Awards.

Ledecky, the 20-year-old Stanford sophomore from Bethesda, Maryland, is a fivetime Olympic swimming gold medalist and the 22-year-old Snyder won gold in wrestling's 97 kg weight class at the Rio Olympics.

“Congratulations to all the nominees for these awards tonight and all of the award winners. You all had tremendous years in your sport and congratulations. I want to personally thank my family, my teammates, my coaches, everyone at the USOC and USA Swimming for supporting me - especially my coach, Greg Meehan, and all my teammates here at Stanford for pushing me every day and making this journey so much fun,” Ledecky said in a statement of winning the Female Olympic Athlete award. “It's been a great year. We won the NCAA national championship in March, I had a great summer in Budapest at world championships, and it's definitely a year I'll look back on with a lot of great memories. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of those memories.”

Earlier this month, Ledecky was named Female Athlete of the Year for the fifth consecutive time at USA Swimming's annual Golden Goggle awards ceremony. (No other swimmer, male or female, has won the award more than three years in a row.) During her freshman season at Stanford, she broke American records nine times and NCAA records 12 times.

Like Ledecky, Snyder is a prodigy who, at 19, became America's youngest wrestling world champion. “Winning is very humbling,” he said of being named Athlete of the Year. “I was with a great group of nominees, all deserving and [am] glad we all get to represent Team USA.”