In the wake of the Olympic postponement, Katie Ledecky re-enrolled in Stanford classes – including one about infectious diseases – the New York Times’ Karen Crouse reported Sunday.
Ledecky, a psychology major, turned professional after her sophomore season with the Cardinal and was taking the year off school to train for Tokyo, but has always planned to finish her degree. She re-enrolled in classes for the spring quarter (online classes, of course), which began about two weeks after the Games were postponed.
“It’s a lot about the different environmental and social factors that cause these outbreaks,” Ledecky said of her infectious diseases class. “They go through SARS and MERS and H.I.V., but there’s definitely a focus on coronavirus. Our professors are giving us insight on the data that they’re tracking. It’s a lot about the bats and the markets and learning how to calculate transmission rates and contractibility and all those different things. It’s been really fascinating.”
Ledecky also revealed that she has been able to swim in a local backyard pool and that she otherwise hasn’t been going outside much. She’s been cooking and eating from delivered meal kits and getting other food through grocery delivery apps.
“I feel lucky that I’m able to get my aerobic workout in from that so I don’t have to do any running or cycling,” she told the Times. “I got some bands and a couple of weights and a pull-up bar. I have a tiny balcony, and there’s one part of it that has a little bit of space, so that’s where I do my dryland to get a little more fresh air.”
Asked how she thinks the pandemic will affect swimming in the longterm, Ledecky said she’s concerned about losing summer leagues because they are how many people get introduced to the sport.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to the summer leagues like the one that I got my start in. That’s a huge gateway for the sport, the way a lot of young kids find their way into it. That’s a year lost on that,” Ledecky said. “I worry about small club teams. Even just thinking about how workouts are going to change when things get back to normal. Will teams have to limit the number of people in lanes? Maybe groups will only be able to swim once a day instead of doubles because they have to extend out the training times. I think it’s going to change some of the mental aspects of training in the sport.”
Nice.
Somebody needs to run down the story of Michael Jordan playing peekaboo with young child Ledecky that she posted on IG.
Inevitable Olympic golds put on hold? Might as well re-enrol at Stanford.
What a flex.
That what I thought when Larson Jensen got tired of Olympic medals, became a Seal officer, then went to Stanford business school. Any chance SwimSwam could find him for an interview? Some folks like him and Katie truly let their actions do the talking, would be a great concept to push during this social media now now now culture
I’m not sure enrolling in online courses is action doing the talking . I can imagine SEAL is action but no talking about it after.
Yeah, talking specifics is not good, but they can talk about training and the kind of mentality that it takes to thrive through extreme adversity and stress, which you can then translate into success in pretty much any other field. I’ve heard from a couple of different SEALs about freak athletes in BUD/S who dropped out because they were used to their talent carrying them through and when things got too hard, the weakness in their head was exposed. I don’t really care about specific missions, but I’d love to hear about Jensen’s experience and how he approaches life, failure, and struggle.
I thought Jansen Larson liked the Navy Seals since he grew up in Bakersfield where serving the country is important.
Straight up baller.