It’s clear that Katie Ledecky looks quite different with dry hair and makeup, but she’s been at home in the pool for years — making her Olympic debut in London in 2012 when she was 15. To say she made a splash would be an understatement. The teen smashed the 800 freestyle, taking home gold straight out of the gate. “I never thought I would make it there,” Ledecky told The Guardian in June 2024. “I never dreamed of that as a young kid.” She likely never dreamed of scoring more golds than any other female swimmer in Olympic history, either.
Regarding Ledecky’s diet, a few things might raise eyebrows, as her celebratory chow down after scoring two golds and two silvers at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics wasn’t exactly what you’d expect for an athlete. “I only had about an hour to get ready [for interviews], so I literally just had cereal on a PB&J,” Ledecky told E! News in August 2021. “That night, though, for dinner, I was doing media somewhere else, and they had a lot better food. So I did get a hamburger there and that was great!”
Still, don’t be fooled into thinking that’s the swimmer’s usual regime — far from it, as she usually consumes way more. Ledecky opened up about her pre-Rio de Janeiro Olympics 2016 diet in an interview with ESPN in August 2016, and let’s just say although there wasn’t a sniff of burgers, peanut butter was still a staple.
