The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ledecky shifts her training base to University of Florida
United States swimmer Katie Ledecky, a 10-time Olympic medalist, is moving her training base to the University of Florida, where she will serve as a volunteer assistant coach for the Gators’ men’s and women’s teams and train for the 2024 Paris Games under head coach Anthony Nesty.
Ledecky, 24, was expected to announce the move from Palo Alto, California, to Gainesville, Florida, on her social media accounts. Ledecky graduated from Stanford University in June, shortly before winning two golds and two silvers at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and was looking to move her training base closer to her hometown of Bethesda, Maryland.
Nesty, 53, is considered a rising star in the collegiate swimming coaching scene, having led the Gators’ men’s team to SEC titles in each of his first three seasons, earning SEC men’s coach of the year honors in all three. He was also an assistant men’s coach for Team USA in Tokyo.
Ledecky, a distance freestyle specialist, was particularly drawn to Nesty’s track record of producing distance and middle-distance champions. In Tokyo this summer, Gators distance swimmer Bobby Finke won gold medals in the men’s 800- and 1,500meter freestyles, finishing both races with unheard-of closing laps, while teammate Kieran Smith took bronze in the men’s 400 free.
Ledecky, meantime, had mixed results in Tokyo, winning golds in her signature race, the women’s 800 free, as well as the 1,500 free, which women contested at the Olympics for the first time in Tokyo. However, she finished second behind Australian phenom Ariarne Titmus in the 400 free — the first time Ledecky had been out-touched in an individual Olympic event — and missed the podium entirely in the 200 free, which she had won five years earlier in Rio de Janeiro. She also anchored the U.S. women’s 4x200 free relay to the silver medal.
Still, no swimmer had ever attempted as many competitive meters — 6,200 — in an Olympics as Ledecky did in Tokyo, and she returned home as the fourth-most-decorated female swimmer in Olympic history, trailing only fellow Americans Natalie Coughlin, Jenny Thompson and Dara Torres (12 medals each). Her six individual Olympic golds rank as the most by a female swimmer.
Ledecky confirmed after the Tokyo Games she would continue her competitive career at least through Paris 2024.
Nesty will become the fourth coach of Ledecky’s international career.
She trained under Yuri Suguiyama at Nation’s Capital Swim Club in 2012, when, at age 15, she won gold in the 800 free at the London Games.
When Suguiyama left to take the head coaching job at the University of California-berkeley in 2013, Ledecky began training at NCAP under Bruce Gemmell, under whom she won four gold medals at the 2016 Rio Games — including world records, which still stand, in the 400 and 800 free.