Wednesday, March 30

A water mistress who masters the pool


In addition to a daily newspaper I subscribe to fifteen publications, some weekly, semi-monthly and monthly, but Vogue is not one of them.

I picked up a copy of the April issue, however,  because a good friend's granddaughter is the subject of a feature story - Free Style - (page 250) dealing with her amazing accomplishments as a young swimmer. 

It is safe to say the six-feet tall Kathy Ledecky of Bethesda, Maryland, could out swim Tarzan, Jane, Boy and Cheetah all at once. Heck, she has already bested every one else. 

At the age of 15, this phenomenon made her debut at the London Olympics four years ago, winning a gold, and has since won golds in the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 meter freestyle races at the FINA World Championships in Russia last August. 

The swimming world is wondering what Miss Ledecky, now 19-years of age, will do to top all this at the Olympics in Brazil this summer. She trains up to 30 hours a week, and has broken her own 800 meter freestyle world record four times since 2013. 

The Vogue feature deals with the maturity and pose of this 19-year old who has deferred her scholarship to Stanford for a year to train for the Olympics.  Last fall she took a couple of classes at Georgetown: Chinese history and politics, to keep herself sharp.

Even if I was not acquainted with her grandmother, the Vogue (April 2016) essay, Free Style, would be enlightening and entertaining reading for the simple pleasure of knowing about this "once-in-a-lifetime" American swimming phenom. 

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