MoCo native Katie Ledecky has won seven Olympic gold medals and 19 world championship gold medals, the most in history for a female swimmer. Ledecky’s six individual gold medals at the Olympics, 14 individual gold medals at the World Aquatics Championships, and 22 overall medals at the World Aquatics Championships are records in women’s swimming. In the last week, she broke a short-course world record for the second time in a one-week span, this time breaking the previous record of 7:59.34 set by Spain’s Mireia Belmonte García in 2013 at a FINA World Cup meet in Indianapolis on Saturday after taking nearly 10 seconds off the short-course world record in the 1500m free last Saturday.
Ledecky was raised in Bethesda, where she attended Little Flower School through eighth grade and attended high school at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, where she graduated in 2015. During her high-school swimming career at Stone ridge, Ledecky twice set the American and US Open record in the 500-yard freestyle, and she twice set the national high school record in the 200-yard freestyle. Ledecky finished her high school career as the holder of the Stone Ridge school record in every swimming event except the 100-meter breaststroke.