America’s two biggest swimming stars will participate in the 4×100 relay races this weekend at the Summer Olympics, USA TODAY’s Christine Brennan reports.
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Rio de Janeiro, Aug 3 (IANS): American swimming great Michael Phelps has eased into practice here as he prepares to add a final glorious chapter to his glittering career.
The opening ceremony is on Friday, with the swimming events kicking off on Saturday.
Anything is possible when Ledecky, 19, climbs to a starting block. Both, though, should leave Rio with more medals than they had upon arrival. “No offense, it’s just what I want to do” and what her coach Bruce Gemmell tells her.
Conger, 21, a Rockville native, swam as a youth for the Rockville-Montgomery Swim Club and won multiple championship last season at the University of Texas.
While there is no 1500m event for women at the Olympics, Ledecky could still be chasing multiple gold medals in Rio, with the 200m freestyle and 4x200m freestyle relay both likely targets and the 4x100m relay a possibility. The dominance in distance races is so pronounced that world No. 2 Leah Smith celebrated after finishing only 1 seconds behind Ledecky in the 400 at the trials. “An interesting common thread I see is the importance of sports in these cultures, the passion that exists for sports and athletic accomplishment”, she said.
“I can’t believe she can go out like that and keep going”, Babashoff said. “I’d be tight and dead”.
Ledecky’s Jewish grandmother Berta Ledecky, 83, also immigrated from Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia in her early life and used to work as a translator for Albert Einstein at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
“My parents just let me do what I loved”, she said.
At Beijing 2008, Phelps won all eight events he contested, reaching a 100 percent result and beating a record set by another U.S swimmer Mark Spitz, who won seven gold meals at Munich 1972. Most of the swimmers do not show good results at the age of 31. She ended 30 years of silence about the ordeal when publishing a memoir this year “Making Waves: My Journey to Winning Olympic Gold and Defeating the East German Doping Program”.
Still a teenager, Katie Ledecky from the U.S. is the most dominant woman in distance swimming.
“I don’t think she would say anything like I did”, said Babashoff, who was called a poor sport after questioning the East Germans’ performances. She attended Little Flower School through eighth grade and Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart for high school. He is competing in his first Olympic Games in August. She hopes to get the flip flops to the Olympians when they return from Rio.
“I feel that I have very special people in my life and, because of that, I feel very fortunate”, she said.
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Plus, it will give her time to bone up on history.
