Where Is Katie Ledecky From? A Look at the Olympic Swimmer's Backstory

With all eyes on Olympic champ Katie Ledecky, fans are more curious than ever to learn more about the incredible swimmer and where she comes from.

Katie's lived and trained in several different places. Below, we take a look at where Katie was born and raised, and where she has lived along the way in her amazing sports journey.

Katie was born on March 17, 1997, in Washington, D.C., to mom Mary Gen and dad David. Her parents raised Katie and her old brother, Michael, in the D.C. suburb of Bethesda, Md. Over the years, Katie joined several swim clubs, including the Palisades Swim Team and the Nation's Capital Swim Club, the latter of which saw the young swimmer training under Yuri Suguiyama and later Bruce Gemmell.

Ultimately, Katie was inspired to get in the water by both her mom and brother. Her mother had swum competitively for the University of New Mexico Lobos while in college, qualifying three times for nationals. (Katie's maternal grandpa even has an aquatic center named after him in Williston, N.D., after having previously campaigned for a town pool.)

Meanwhile, Katie's brother's decision at age 9 to join a summer swim league prompted a then-6-year-old Katie to do the same. They both loved it so much that they started swimming year round.

"And I swam with my brother throughout that and always followed him to the pool and wanted to be in the same group as him in everything," Katie reflected to WBUR in 2015. "I just always enjoyed swimming with him and I think that's how I really found my love of the sport. I think if I didn't have my brother swimming with me, I don't know if I would have loved it as much as I did and still do."

In 2015, Katie graduated high school from Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, where she'd swum competitively and broken several American records. Upon graduating, she held the school's record in all swimming events except for one (the 100-meter breaststroke).

Katie received a scholarship to Stanford University, which saw her packing her bags in Maryland and heading over to the Golden State. During her college career, she continued to smash swimming records and even bagged eight National Collegiate Athletic Association titles, among other accomplishments. Somehow, she found time to graduate in 2020 with a degree in psychology and a minor in political science.

But it makes sense if you know about Katie's parents, who prioritize education in their family. In fact, Katie's dad is an attorney with degrees from both Harvard and Yale. And Katie's older brother followed in Dad's Harvard footsteps, where he wrote about sports for the Harvard Crimson. In one article he wrote about his little sis, he talked about how she "inspired me as her number one fan."

After graduating from Stanford, and with her sights set on the 2024 Paris Olympic games, Katie left California and moved to Florida, where she began training at the O’Connell Center at the University of Florida in Gainesville under swim coach Anthony Nesty.