It’s been a big month for Katie Ledecky. Just days after announcing a partnership with major swimwear brand TYR at the Pro Swim in Santa Clara, Ledecky announced via social media that she would be gracing the cover of the July issue of National Geographic, which hits newsstands June 26th.
July 2018 @NatGeo cover story, on newsstands June 26! https://t.co/9Z8byOnaNd pic.twitter.com/fD7fZmjiEo
— Katie Ledecky (@katieledecky) June 18, 2018
Ledecky is the featured athlete in an article titled “Building a better athlete“, which features numerous athletes who have been deemed incredible including Ledecky, track star Usain Bolt, Paralympian Jarryd Wallace, and swimmings own Michael Andrew. This is the first time that an Olympic swimmer has ever been on the cover of National Geographic. This also marks the first time a female Olympian has graced the cover. Ledecky also shared this photo to her instagram account today, which was used in the feature.
Just got my issue!!!! Congrats to Katie
Is Nat Geo the new Wheaties box?
Ledecky and her representatives have been managing her career extremely well. She’s honed a polished media persona. She’s won essentially every important athletic award world wide. She’s been the first Olympian to sponsor a USN aircraft carrier. She’s holding down a 4.0 at Stanford and has won multiple athletic/academic awards. She signed with Tyr to great fanfare and then immediately broke a world record in her first meet, a meet who’s lead sponsor happened to be her lead sponsor. Her social media activity has been consistently extremely professional and on point. Now she’s the first swimmer EVER on the cover of the iconic National Geographic magazine. This woman is going somewhere, even beyond the pool. She’s a force of nature.
Just don’t want to see her in annoying stupid commercials.
This one from TYR is good
https://www.tyr.com/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=tyr_p_pro%20tyr%20commercial%20&utm_campaign=00-01&msclkid=802df01ea6961bcf1749ab34c19b4de4&utm_content=01_TYR%20phrase%20match
I think her brother, who was a jounalism major at Harvard, has been tending to her social media accounts since she started her rise. He’s done a really good job of keeping it looking professional without sounding like some corporate PR person was writing everything.
Her GPA is actually a 3.99 so obviously her grades are suffering from all this media exposure…
How do people know what her GPA is?t
Because she won an award for it: https://staging.swimswam.com/ledecky-ransford-named-at-large-academic-all-americans-of-the-year/
National Geographic’s version of Sports Illustrated’s “swimsuit edition!”
FYI: Schooling made the cover of Nat Geo while swimming in practice.
To be fair, he has made the cover of many good magazines including Harper’s Bazaar.
Maybe you would not mind his exposure if he bleached his hair in blond? Just wondering…
The joke is b/c of Schooling’s comments about his practice times, a well established Schooling joke on SwimSwam. Inferring a hair color change would change the situation completely misses the intent, the joke, and comes off as smarmy. Not cool.
Chill
SwimSwam be like “where caeleb dressel at tho”
Lol does Michael Andrew really belong with Ledecky and Bolt
Nah but Dean Ferris does
Arguably yes. Not because he has accomplished (nearly) as much as they have, but because (a) he’s still an elite athlete and world champion, and (b) the story is about new training methods and Andrew takes advantage of unique and controversial training techniques.
They’ve certainly done a good job of marketing his training as new or even revolutionary, I’ll give you that. And the controversy surrounding him is a testament to how well they have been marketing this “new” idea. But the idea of training at race pace is much older than Michael Andrew (see bob bowman’s talks about Phelps’ training and the recent videos on this site of ledecky in the practice pool), and I think it’s kind of silly to be highlighting someone with so little success compared to the others in the piece.
That being said, I’m glad to have more swimmers in the limelight, and I’m glad for the exposure, no matter the ambassador.
When you break things down like research and experiments, according published literature, his specific type of approach has not been done. So yes, this is different. It is not like anyone else at the elite level has done and if they have, from age group through elite level swimming, has not shared with the masses. If it has been done, please provide the link and share it.
Why is it silly if he is highlighted for his training style and swimming at an elite level? If no one else has done this quite like him, isn’t it worth mentioning given the premise of the article?
Swim fans: We want more exposure!
Michael Andrew in NatGeo: Boo he’s not worthy!
no kidding… bunch of armchair quarterbacks here.
Michael Andrew is fine as long as they limit it to 50 words
He must have a great agent.