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Title details for Just Add Water by Katie Ledecky - Available

Just Add Water

My Swimming Life

by Katie Ledecky
ebook
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2 of 2 copies available
A New York Times bestselling memoir from Olympic gold medalist, world champion, and the most decorated US female Olympian in history: Katie Ledecky.
Katie Ledecky has won more individual Olympic races than any female swimmer in history. She is a four-time Olympian, a nine-time gold medalist, a twenty-one-time world champion, eight-time NCAA Champion, and a world record-holder in individual swimming events. At the 2024 Olympics in Paris, she became the most decorated US female Olympian of all time. Time and again, the question is posed to her family, her coaches, and to her—what makes her a champion? Now, for the first time, she shares what it takes to compete at an elite level.

Again and again, Ledecky has broken records: those of others and, increasingly, her own. She is both consistent and innovative—consistent at setting goals and shattering them, and innovative in the way she approaches her training. A true competitor, she sets her goals by choosing the ones that feel the scariest. But, crucially, she never sacrifices the joy of competition, even in the face of adversity. Her positive mental outlook and a great support system provides the springboard to her success.

Just Add Water charts Ledecky's life in swimming. It details her start in Bethesda, Maryland, where she played sharks and minnows and first discovered the joy of the pool; her early foray into the Olympics at the tender age of fifteen where, as the youngest member of the American team, she stunned everyone by winning her first gold medal; her time balancing competition and her education at Stanford University; how she developed a champion's mindset that has allowed her to persevere through so many meets, even under intense pressure; and how she has maintained her dominance in a sport where success depends on milliseconds. You learn how every element of her life—from the support of her family to the tutelage of her coaches, from her childhood spent in summer league swimming to the bright lights of Olympic pools in London, Rio, and Tokyo—set her up to become the champion she is.

In the end, Katie's story is about testing yourself against the difficult, and seeing who you become on the other side.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 11, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781668060223

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781668060223
      • File size: 50675 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      July 15, 2024
      At 27, an Olympian and record-holding swimmer reviews her journey to excellence. Ledecky was an up-and-coming club swimmer in Washington, D.C., when her coach asked her to begin keeping a journal, recording details of her practices and "something special" she did each day. He said she should feel free to "jot down anything else she wanted to write." An extraordinarily focused athlete whose life has been blessedly free from tragedy, the young swimmer had no dirt to report, and that is also the case with her memoir. "My goal was to better myself through swimming," she writes. "To discover who I was and what I was made of. The pool provided the ideal instrument for that journey. The Olympic medals, the world records, those are incredi-ble achievements. But I'm more gratified by how swimming has shaped me. How the pursuit has molded me into the best version of myself." This sets the tone: upbeat, generic, sometimes a little stuffy in the manner of a self-conscious term paper. On competing alongside Michael Phelps for the first time, she writes, "To say that experience was surreal is to do a disservice to the word." Between the chapters covering the phases of her career, Ledecky offers sections on each of her immediate family and grandparents, all exceptional people with rare drive--among them a Czech immigrant, a Midwestern farm girl, and a Jewish woman in New York. Though family history is important to her, this hagiography gets to be a bit much. However, for those interested in granular detail about Ledecky's stroke, training techniques, motivational habits, experiences with the Covid-19 pandemic and drug testing, and thrilling wins and successes, this book will serve as relevant preparation for watching her in this summer's Paris Olympics. A trove of detail for aspiring swimmers and serious fans of the sport.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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