Janet Evans Looks at Katie Ledecky and Sees an Olympic ‘What If’ Scenario

August 2, 2024

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Janet Evans Looks at Katie Ledecky and Sees an Olympic ‘What If’ Scenario

When Janet Evans first saw her good friend Katie Ledecky swim the 1,500 meters at the Olympics, she cried her eyes out. She was like a heartbroken teenager whose first love has run off with someone else.

This was in 2021, the first time women were allowed to swim the “mile,” as Evans and every American swimming nerd calls it, at the Olympics.

Evans, a gold medalist in the 400 and 800 in 1988 and the 800 in 1992, was Ledecky ahead of Ledecky, so much better at distance races than anyone else that it was a joke. That night in 2021, she watched Ledecky alone at the spectator-free Tokyo Games from her home in Laguna Beach, California.

Why the tears?

For decades, she and all the other world-class female distance swimmers were blown away when they tried to swim the longest race in the pool like the men. There was always another excuse. No room in the program. Not enough beds for extra athletes.

They heard something else, too: a thinly veiled message that most women couldn’t run that far in a time worth watching, even though they did so in college, at other international competitions, and all the time in training.

There is little doubt that Evans would have won two or three more gold medals had the 1,500 metres been part of the Olympic programme when she was at her peak, or even afterwards at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, where she passed the torch to Muhammad Ali before he lit the flame during the opening ceremony, a signature moment of the modern Olympics.

Janet Evans lights Muhammad Ali’s torch during the opening ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Ali then lit the cauldron. (Lynn Johnson/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

“The mile was my best race,” Evans, 52, said Wednesday night at a bar outside La Defense Arena, where she had just watched Ledecky demolish the field to win her second straight 1,500-meter gold in 15:30.02, shattering her Olympic record and finishing 10 seconds and nearly half a swimming pool faster than silver medalist Anastasiia Kirpichnikova.

“I’ve held that world record for about 20 years,” Evans said.

Evans didn’t cry this time as she watched Ledecky from a few rows up on the Olympic pool deck. Her 17-year-old daughter, Sydney Willson—another distance specialist, a rising senior who has already committed to Princeton in 2025—sat next to her, capturing her mother’s ear-to-ear smiles and arm-pumping movements as they watched Ledecky tear through the final lap.

Evans looked at the scoreboard when it was done and did some quick swimming. Her best time in the 1500 meters was 15:50.

“I would have been fifth tonight,” she said at the bar, just over 36 years after that world record.

Once a competitive swimmer, always a competitive swimmer.

Janet Evans swims at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She almost certainly would have added to her gold medal if a women’s 1,500-meter race had been offered in her day. (Dennis Paquin/AP)

Evans is in Paris for a number of reasons.

Reason #1: She’s a real swimming fanatic and loves the Olympics.

This is her 18th Olympics, including the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, which she attended as a fan. She is a true believer. Her daughter joined in the conversation that left her mother in tears during the opening ceremony on Friday night, as the boats sailed up the Seine.

Reason #2: She’s at work.

Evans, who served on the World Aquatics Athletes Commission for 14 years, from 1992 to 2006, at one point serving as its chairman, is one of the leaders of LA28, the organizing committee for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

She is the Chief Athletic Officer and is essentially responsible for every phase of the Los Angeles sports experience, from the moment they arrive at the Games to what they eat, where they sleep and how they travel to and from the competitions.

And make sure that women are treated the same as men.

“I’m here to observe, to take it in, to see what we want to do the same, what we want to do differently, what we can do better,” she said.

Her first impressions of Paris? “The sets are spectacular, the arenas are amazing and the stands are full,” she said.

That last history is perhaps the most important, because it has been 12 years since the Games were full. Tickets were too expensive for the vast majority of Brazilians and stadiums were at most half full at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. Then came Tokyo. Covid. Enough said.

Evans said she would reserve judgment on what could be improved until after the Games and that she could consult with athletes on what could be improved. She noted that American track and field star Noah Lyles said he had trouble finding a safe and quiet place in the Olympic Village. She made a note of that.

In 2028, the athletes will move to the UCLA campus, where some peace and quiet seems achievable.

As a child of Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that encouraged federal funding for girls and women to participate in sports in the U.S., Evans is proud that the Paris Olympics will finally feature an equal number of male and female athletes.

She was part of the so-called “Games of the Woman” in 1996, when the US women’s soccer team and other female stars broke through. But there was still a long way to go, and there still is.

Her 14-year-old son recently asked her why women play shorter tennis matches at the Grand Slam tournament than men. She was amused to hear that many boys today think inequality in sports is just weird.

As she spoke, her eyes kept wandering to the television in the bar. Léon Marchand, the French swimming sensation, was tearing through the water for his second individual gold medal of the night. Everyone in France is obsessed with him. In the arena, the roar of the crowd and the choruses of the national anthem made ears ring.

An ocean away in the United States, Marchand is still relatively unknown. He trains in Austin, Texas, she noted. The star-making machine of Los Angeles will soon be working on him. “What we’re trying to do is hard, and we need athletes to help,” she said.

Katie Ledecky and Janet Evans have known each other since 2012, when they both competed in the U.S. Olympic qualifiers: Ledecky at age 15, Evans at age 40. (Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

At the top of that list is her friend Ledecky, who at 27 has already said she wants to swim in Los Angeles. A unique opportunity to compete in the Games in her home country.

And why not?

She went from start to finish in winning the 1,500 Wednesday, methodically building her lead, about half a body length for each lap of the pool, and seemingly cruising through her 41-stroke round with such ease. She barely kicked, taking breaths every other stroke, like a weekend warrior working out at the local YMCA. She turned it on for the final lap, and punched harder. She hit the water after hitting the wall, ripped off one of her caps and let out a howl.

She later said that the victory was for all the women who had never competed in this race.

Women like Evans, who helped Ledecky land a spot on the LA28 board. They’ve known each other since 2012, when Evans, then 40 and already a mother of two, decided to see if she could qualify for the Olympic trials. She did, racing in the same events as the 15-year-old Ledecky.

Shortly after, they became texting buddies. Ledecky is a mentor of sorts to her daughter, the three forming a small tribe of distance specialists who understand each other like no other.

Evans’ eyes drifted back to the party unfolding at La Defense, where more than 20,000 fans had packed a rugby stadium to watch the swim and spilled out onto the plaza. During the Los Angeles Games, the swim will be held at SoFi Stadium, home to the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers in nearby Inglewood, California.

It is planned to accommodate 38,000 people, the largest audience ever for Olympic swimming, but that number is likely to increase given the expected demand for tickets in the heart of American swimming culture.

“That must be amazing,” Evans said, with a hint of FOMO in her voice.

It seems like there’s a good chance of that happening, especially if Ledecky dominates the mile again.

Evans will of course be there, a true ‘circle of life’ moment, from fan to star to organiser.

And she’ll no doubt do some quick swimming math once the race is over.