From June 15 to 23, in Indianapolis, swimming in the United States will experience an unprecedented moment. For the first time, the qualifying Trials for the Olympic Games will be held in a regular NFL stadium such as the Lucas Oil Stadium and there will be the best representatives of the country looking for a pass to Paris 2024.
The Trials will be held in the same city that hosted them for Paris 1924 and will be the largest stage where a swimming pool will be installed; some 250,000 people are expected to attend during the nine days of competition to see the 700 swimmers who will seek their place to compete in La Defénse Arena in Paris and one of the great attractions will be Katie Ledecky.
Ledecky is going to his fourth Olympic Games and gigantic his legend. The woman born in Washington 27 years ago has accumulated 10 medals from London to Tokyo, seven of those gold medals, making her the swimmer with the most Olympic titles. And it could have been eight if it weren’t for second place in a test that is now under suspicion in the swimming world.
In Tokyo, the United States 4x200 pole set a new national record (7:40.73), but did not allow it to keep the victory because China won the gold with a new world record (7:40.33). Zhang Yufei and Yang Junxuan, two members of the team, are part of the 23 doping cases reported by China to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in June 2021, prior to the Games in the Japanese capital, and which were only discovered a few weeks ago through the German television program Geheimsache Doping (Top Secret Doping, in Spanish) and the American newspaper The New York Times.
“It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes,” Ledecky said of the case, in an interview with CBS News, and he didn’t hesitate to say: “I think our faith in some of the systems is at its lowest.”
“You try not to think too much when you’re competing, the best thing you can do is go out and try to win,” Ledecky said, although he acknowledged that “it’s difficult when you have in the back of your head that it’s not necessarily an even playing field.”
At the beginning of 2021, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ), a prescription medication for the heart that improves sports performance; China argued that it was contamination and the AMA found no evidence to determine anything different, although it also acknowledged that it could not do research “on the territory” due to restrictions due to Covid-19. The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) accused the AMA of “blindfolding its eyes” and stated that “the selective and selfish application of the rules destroys public trust in the authenticity and value of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement.”
“It doesn’t seem like everything has been followed to the letter, I would like to see some responsibility here. I would like to see some answers as to why this happened the way it did and, really, I would like to see that steps are taken for the future, so that we can regain some trust in the global system. I believe that the entire case needs to be independently and thoroughly re-examined, and all information must be available,” Ledecky said.
The American, winner of 21 world titles, will seek to win four more gold titles in Paris, where she will participate in the 400, 800 and 1500 freestyle, as well as in the 4x200 pole. If she succeeds, she will exceed the nine that the Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina has. And the legend can already be imagined in Los Angeles: “I think 2028 would be an incredible end to my career. I don’t even want to say that right now because, who knows? I could go to 2028 and say, ‘No, I don’t want to finish yet. I want to move on! ‘”
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