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PHILLIPS 66 NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPSAugust 5, 2014Bruce GemmellKathleen LedeckyIRVINE, CALIFORNIA KATIE LEDECKY: Thanks to all of you for being here, for your coverage. I'm really looking forward to this week and excited for some fast swimming and to see all my National Team teammates and see how fast they can go, too. It's an exciting week, and this meet is a really crucial meet for a lot of people, so it's going to be an exciting week. Q. Katie, I want to ask you, when was the first time you heard about a swimmer named Missy Franklin, and what were your impressions of her? KATIE LEDECKY: Probably when I was 13‑ish, a couple years ago, right when she was on the scene at Worlds swimming fast, so I watched her swim when she swam at Worlds when I was a little younger, and watching all these swimmers compete online, and she was swimming really fast. I've enjoyed getting to know her over the past two years on the Olympic team and the Worlds team, and it's always great to be on a team with her. She has really good, positive energy, and it's fun to be on the team with her. Q. Katie, I think a lot of people lump the 800 and 1500 together and think if you're a distance swimmer you can swim both and be good at both. Can you describe what the differences are? In some ways it seems like the two might have as much to do with each other as the 400 and the 100. How do you look at it? KATIE LEDECKY: I guess I look at them pretty similarly. Sometimes I even go a best time in the 800 off the mile split. I think I approach them fairly similarly. I treat them as races, and I know what paces I need to hit for the 800 and the mile, and I guess those two are more similar than the 400 and the 800. Everything under the 800 is a sprint for me. Q. If you could go your best time in an 800 on your way to a 1500, how do you explain not being able to go faster in the regular 800? KATIE LEDECKY: Well, it doesn't happen anymore, but I know my mile in June, I think I went my third or fourth best time in the 800. I don't think you'll be seeing that anymore, but it's just once I get into a rhythm, it's pretty hard for me to stop holding that rhythm. Q. Katie, I know you're entered in a lot of different distances here, but generally speaking, what appeals to you about these longer distances? Not all swimmers do them and are not as dominant doing them, either, but what do you like about the 800 and the 1500? KATIE LEDECKY: I think I like the training for it the most. I just like the feeling of a hard practice, and Bruce gives them to us. I've been training for everything, though. I think I see myself more as a freestyler than a distance swimmer, so I focus on the freestyles mainly. Q. The 200m freestyle, I think a lot of people are anticipating watching you win because it's actually a distance where people are close to you in races, especially with the Americans Missy and Allison. What intrigues you the most about that event and having that kind of domestic competition in it? KATIE LEDECKY: I think it's really exciting, and I think the best part about it is hopefully we'll all be on a relay together at some point, whether that's this year or next year or sometime in the future, and I think the more we push each other the faster we're going to go and the faster our relay is going to be. That's the most exciting thing, I think, in my view. Q. Bruce, what's it like to see her in a 200 and in a race where it's not a foregone conclusion in a lot of cases? BRUCE GEMMELL: Well, certainly the thing that intrigues Katie in particular and myself about the 200 was the relay and the relay possibilities with it. Obviously if you want to swim on the women's 800 free relay for the U.S., you need to be pretty good at the 200, and in order to get good enough to be on a relay, all of a sudden we're pretty competitive individually, also. The relay is what's driving it, and she's gotten pretty good at it. Q. Following up, you talked about your training. How many meters do you swim a day? How many days a week? Can you talk about what your training regimen is like? KATIE LEDECKY: Well, Bruce could probably answer that better than I could, but it's probably about 7,000 to 9,000 per practice, and then about eight times a week or nine times a week. I guess in the summer it's a little more. I think in the summer I swam nine times a week, and then I do dry land on top of that, too, two to three times a week. Q. So you're going twice‑a‑day training sessions? KATIE LEDECKY: A couple days a week, yes. Q. I presume that your plan would be to defer your entry to Stanford one year and take that year and train for the Olympics, or is that not your plan? KATIE LEDECKY: That's something I'm certainly thinking about, and I'll be making that decision in the next couple of months. Q. Sprinters take relays for granted. As someone who swims events that are usually tacked on to the end it seems like kind of a lonely existence for the distance swimmer. Is that part of the allure for you is to really feel more of that team atmosphere and being part of a relay where you're not so alone? KATIE LEDECKY: I guess so. It's exciting to be a part of Team USA. It's just a really great team, so many great swimmers. It really is an honor to be on a relay, and that's something that I have been shooting for. I was on it last year and really enjoyed it there. Hopefully I'll have a few more of those in the future. Q. What do you enjoy best about being on a relay? KATIE LEDECKY: I think just being in an event with three other people and being in the ready room with them. It's a pretty relaxing environment, and we're all working towards the same goal. We want to do our best to represent the country, and you do it all together. It's fun when four people can do it all together. Q. You're entered in the individual medleys here. How serious of an event is that for you and could you compete in major national meets at some point? KATIE LEDECKY: I don't think I'll be swimming it internationally any time in the future. We'll see if I swim them here. That's sort of to be determined. It's better to over‑enter here than under‑enter. Q. Going back to Missy, last year at the World Championships it was really interesting because you broke your world record and won your four golf medals and she also set the record for most golds by a woman in a single Worlds, and you were named the swimmer of the meet. I think I remember in the press conference you said this award deserves to go to Missy. What kind of, I guess, emotions did you have watching her at that meet, and kind of the back and forth between you guys? It almost kind of‑‑ KATIE LEDECKY: Yeah, I don't think it was any back and forth or anything like that. We just both wanted to do our best, and I guess that award could have gone to both of us, either of us. It was really exciting to be on the team with her, and everybody on the team was just trying to do their best, and Missy did phenomenally. I had probably my best meet of my life. It was a really exciting meet. I hope to be on more international trips and more international trips with Missy. Q. Is this week a shave‑and‑taper meet for you that you're really geared a lot of training toward this meet to go potential‑‑ KATIE LEDECKY: Yeah, it's an important meet, this meet and PanPacs, hopefully I'll qualify for the PanPacs, and these two meets are really big for qualifying for Worlds next year. There is a good amount of focus on this meet, and I've just been doing whatever he's been telling me to do in practice, and hopefully it'll mean good swimming this week. Q. Katie, the two world records in Texas, that was coming off an altitude training camp; is that right? KATIE LEDECKY: Yes. Q. Is that the first time you had gone to a meet after an altitude training camp? KATIE LEDECKY: Yes, it was. That was my first extended period of time at altitude. I was there for 18 days, and then we went to Texas and swam the meet there. It was my first time. I didn't know exactly what to expect or what times to expect. It was fun to swim fast and feel good there. Q. Bruce, considering her success there, is that something you're considering in the future, more altitude camps, a regular occurrence, once a season? BRUCE GEMMELL: Before we left camp I had already booked time for next year, so it was booked whether she was successful or not, I guess, but that was sort of the plan, and as she said it was the first time she was there and everybody reacts differently. Obviously we got a favorable reaction. We had already booked a time before the results, so it wasn't a big change of plans or anything. Q. When you were leaving the camp did you expect special things coming out of the camp from her? I know people can react differently, but did you see something that said maybe she would react well? BRUCE GEMMELL: You know, I had a ballpark where I thought she would swim, and sometimes I lose perspective myself on just how fast that time might be or where it is in relation to everybody else. As she said before, I think we both expected her, in the mile in particular, 15:40 or just under, so there wasn't a huge surprise, but I think we sort of forget that that's a pretty good swim sometimes. Q. Bruce, you were a distance swimmer, you've coached a number of distance swimmers. When you hear Katie say once I get into a rhythm it's pretty hard for me to stop, how much can you relate to that? How rare is that ability to have that metronomic‑‑ BRUCE GEMMELL: I think you used the right word there. It's almost a metronome that gets going, and having swum I can relate to it a little bit. More so I can listen to the swims and really understand whether it's being swum well or not. Maybe that's just spending too much time on lonely pool decks, but you can hear the rhythm, the cadence, the metronome, and you know what to expect out of the individual swimmers as far as that goes. Q. Meaning stroke? BRUCE GEMMELL: Just the stroke rate and the noise of the kick or the water entry, whatever it is. I know Katie has said when she's swimming that she feels that way, and I said, I can listen to it and sort of how the swim is going. KATIE LEDECKY: Sometimes during practice he says that doesn't sound like fast swimming, or that sounds like fast swimming. BRUCE GEMMELL: It doesn't sound right sometimes, I'm sorry. A concert pianist can obviously hear it on the piano, and we hear it on the pool deck. Q. Coach, can you describe if Katie has like a consistent strategy on these distance events like the 800 and the mile in terms of how she takes it out? Does she pretty much go hard from the very beginning or is she like a back‑halfer that you hear a lot with distance swimming? Does she have a consistent strategy in how she tries to swim these races? BRUCE GEMMELL: I think one of Katie's biggest growth areas over the last year is she can swim the races multiple ways. I think up until a couple years ago she was most comfortable and with only swum it real hard going out from the start, but based upon her swims last summer in Barcelona that for various reasons we chose to swim different ways, and for the swims down in Texas, I think that's her biggest growth area, that she can now swim back half, front half, middle half, every other lap, however we choose to swim it. We've done that before. Q. What kind of strategies, factors change those‑‑ the ways she swims those races? What kinds of things are factored in? BRUCE GEMMELL: Probably the two biggest things would be obviously the competitive field and then where the race falls in the overall program schedule. You're going to swim differently on the first day of a seven or eight‑day meet than you might on the last day. Q. Can you talk about anything that might be a factor this week where Katie, her seed times are quite a bit ahead in the distance events than the competition. BRUCE GEMMELL: I think the most important thing to remember for this week is that this week is one of two weeks of racing over the next three weeks, and we almost have to view it as a three‑week meet. Not quite, but it's almost a three‑week meet, and we need to manage that accordingly. That'll dictate as much as anything. Q. Bruce, you were saying a little bit earlier, hinting that you get so used to seeing certain times or certain swims that you forget sometimes that was a really good race. Did it happen in Texas or any time Katie swims, does it ever surprise you anymore the growth she has made in her swimming over the last year or two? BRUCE GEMMELL: You know, it's always relatively incremental, so it's sort of in some ways like watching your kids grow up. You don't realize that they're six feet tall. They don't go from four feet to six feet, and Katie has sort of done the same thing. Every time we've gotten a little bit better in different areas. Q. Literally in a pool full of practice swimmers or in a noisy arena for a meet, you can literally hear the sounds of what her stroke is like? BRUCE GEMMELL: Yeah. Q. How do you hear that amidst all the other racket in the background? BRUCE GEMMELL: It's not racket. You know, obviously the fewer swimmers that are in the water, the easier it is to pick out. If we have a practice of 40 swimmers going we might not be able to do it, but if we're in small numbers or in a race setting, you can pick it out pretty easily. It's something we listen to for 20 hours a week, so you get used to it. Q. Katie, picking Stanford, did you talk to Janet Evans at all before that, or since picking Stanford have you heard from Janet at all? KATIE LEDECKY: No, not really. I actually met her for the first time at Golden Goggles in November, so it was really nice to meet her, and at that point the college process was just sort of ramping up, so I never had much conversation with her about that. I know that there's a great history there, and I'm really excited about my decision, and I'm looking forward to swimming for Stanford and competing at the NCAA level there. Q. What was the conversation like between you and Janet at Golden Goggles? KATIE LEDECKY: Well, I was actually at the Swimming Through the Decades event where Janet, Lenny Krayzelburg, Matt Biondi and Tracy Caulkins were there and Rowdy was moderating. It was really neat to hear them talk and tell their stories of their Olympic experiences and sort of share those moments with each other. Q. Were you the only active swimmer there? KATIE LEDECKY: Yes, I was. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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