Long before Katie Ledecky became one of America’s most decorated swimmers, she was a 15-year-old in London, making her Olympics debut and trying to psych herself up for her first international meet in front of a crowd that included members of the British royal family.
The favorite in the competition was English swimmer Rebecca Adlington and, as Ledecky explained, she had expected the crowd to chant “Becky! Becky!”
“And I had programed myself to think they are shouting, Le-DECKY! Le-DECKY!”
Ledecky, who graduated from Stanford in 2020, recalled the story of how she won her first Olympic medal during her return to the Farm on Sunday, where she delivered a commencement address to the university’s 5,271 graduating students, its largest graduating class ever. The London race would be the first of her nine Olympic gold medals spanning four Olympics. But to win it, as she recalled, she had to defy the advice of her coaches and other observers who suggested that she pace herself and not go too fast off the block.
Instead, she took an early lead and went on to expand it.
“About midway through race I remember thinking, ‘Where is everybody?’” Ledecky recalled. “There’s a brief second where I wondered if I’m doing something wrong, like I’ve gone out too fast. Then I told myself, ‘Just keep going.” And I did.”
She won by more than 4 seconds.
Ledecky said that later that evening, as she was watching the replay of the race in the Olympic Village, she heard commentators similarly fretting throughout the race about her fast pace. It wasn’t until she had a large lead, three-quarters into the race, that they started cheering for her, confident of her victory.
“Can you imagine what it would’ve been like for me if I were hearing that commentary the whole time I was swimming? I’d be thinking, ‘Hmmm, maybe they’re right. I should probably slow down.’” she said.
Ledecky told the graduates that there will be people in their lives telling them not to rush, that they’re still young. She asked them to consider ways in which being young and unknown can be an advantage. Go fast, she said, when you need to go fast.
“Sometimes, you just have to go for it and find out what you’re capable of,” Ledecky said.
Ledecky, who graduated from Stanford as a psychology major and political science minor, focused her commencement speech on the three elements that helped her go the distance as a swimmer: pace, process and time. In discussing her process, she estimated that she had swam about 26,000 miles as part of her training, which set her up for the 5.5 miles that she has had to swim during the Olympics. She likened it to the estimated 14,000 pages of reading assignments (more for English majors) that Stanford students typically have to get through before they graduate.
“As you move forward, trust your process, fall in love with your process, build a community that’s supports that process and trusts that all the small, seemingly insignificant moments have added up to something special,” Ledecky said. “They made you into the person you are today.”
In explaining how she manages her time during distance races, Ledecky said she often thinks about her family. During the Tokyo Olympics, she recalled, she had two races that were about an hour apart. She was off during the first one and did not medal. For the second one, the 1500m freestyle, she said she had to shrug things off and focus. So she began to think about her grandmothers, repeating their names with each stroke.
“I swam with the sense of strength and freedom,” Ledecky said. “I felt like my grandparents lifted me up to gold that day.”
Ledecky told the graduates that the truly important work that they will do will “sometimes feel like you’re swimming alone.”
“Yet I found those are the moments where I most needed my people, my family, my teammates, my coaches. They are the voices that carry you through the tough time.”
In introducing Ledecky, Stanford University President Jonathan Levin also alluded to the hard times that members of Class of 2025 faced as they began their Stanford journey during a time when the university was reopening its campus after the pandemic. Traditions had been forgotten, and the class had to “renew the spirit of irreverence, which combined with academic excellence, is essential to Stanford,” he said.
“I can confidently say that you will be remembered as the class that brought back fun,” Levin said.
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