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Katie Ledecky reveals her future Olympic plans and her swimming secret weapon

American swimmer Katie Ledecky medaled in four of five races during the Tokyo Games. Ledecky made history during these Olympics and went out on a high note with a gold medal in the women’s 800m free. Plus, Ledecky revealed her future in the pool and credits one aspect of her career with her great success.

Video transcript

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- Nine years after taking the pool by storm in 2012 at the London games, Katie Ledecky is still wowing people all over the world. The American swimmer wrapped up her final race in Tokyo on Saturday, taking home the gold in the women's 800 meter freestyle. It's Ledecky's third consecutive win in that race. Swimming in five events, Ledecky's loot in Tokyo includes two gold and two silver medals.

She's the most decorated female Olympic swimmer in history with six individual gold medals. And with 10 Olympic medals total, she's not stopping anytime soon. After Ledecky's final race in Tokyo, she said she plans on competing at the 2024 Paris games, and possibly even 2028 in Los Angeles. If you're wondering what sets Ledecky apart from her competitors, here's some inside info for you from the GOAT herself--

KATIE LEDECKY: Everyone always says they love racing more than they love training. I-- I do really love racing, and I do love it more than training, but training is right-- right up there with it. I really enjoy the day to day and just that challenge of trying to get better. And just thinking back the years, and I swam in the Olympics when I was 15 in 2012, and I grew a lot as a trainer between 2012 and 2016 to the point that the year before 2016, I was just training at a level I had never trained at before and just going times that are, yeah, just pretty fast.

And you know, I've kind of maintained that level of training that I got to before-- before Rio over the past 4-plus years now. And I've tried to continue to improve, which is really fun. And I've been doing-- been able to do a little more long course training over the past five years at Stanford. You just see it as a process, and it makes the end result even more sweet if you enjoy the process on a day to day basis.

And it doesn't hurt to be able to do it with really great people like Brooke, like Simone, like Katie Drabot. We all have that same goal, and it really pushes us, and we have a lot of fun. We laugh, we talk, we commiserate together in tough sets. And Greg does a really great, great job of leading us and guiding us along this journey.