Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky Adjust to Life as Swimming Royalty

8/16/2014   The New York Times   By KAREN CROUSE

IRVINE, Calif. — They are USA Swimming’s dynamic duo, but there is one competition that neither Missy Franklin nor Katie Ledecky can win: the popularity contest to anoint a single chlorine queen. It is a losing proposition for both Franklin, a six-time gold medalist at last summer’s world championships, and Ledecky, who will go into this week’s Pan Pacific Swimming Championships poised to win as many as five gold medals.

Deciding between Franklin, 19, and Ledecky, 17, is like choosing between two gourmet chocolate truffles. Does one prefer the richest cocoa or the sweetest filling? The tendency is to fall for the newer confection.

Four years ago, Franklin bounded onto the scene and supplanted Natalie Coughlin as America’s swimming sweetheart. In the lead-up to the 2016 Rio Olympics, Ledecky, with world-record efforts in the 400-, 800- and 1500-meter freestyles, took the crown from Franklin, who tried to head off the public’s inclination to turn the women’s competition at nationals into a two-teenager duel.

“She has her goals and accomplishments, and I have mine,” Franklin said, adding, “I don’t want her to feel like her accomplishments aren’t as good as mine or mine aren’t as good as hers.”

The 30-woman squad that will represent the United States in the Pan Pacifics on Australia’s Gold Coast has an average age of 20.6 and will be led by Franklin and Ledecky, whose youth is irrelevant.

“Leadership, I believe, is not tied to chronological age,” said Teri McKeever, the women’s coach.

McKeever, who coaches Franklin at California, Berkeley, said one of her axioms was, “I can’t hear what you’re saying because your actions speak so loudly.”

Referring to Franklin and Ledecky, she added, “The day-to-day way they take care of business is contagious.”

Franklin’s effervescent personality led one Cal teammate to joke recently, “What did she do, fall out of a box of Lucky Charms?”

McKeever said the reference to the sugary cereal endorsed by Lucky the Leprechaun was “a perfect way to explain” Franklin, a four-time Olympic gold medalist who owns the world record in the 200 backstroke and is the unofficial world-record holder in appearances in fans’ selfies.

Franklin is ever-accommodating to strangers, she said, because she can remember being thrilled with autographs from or interactions with her favorite swimmers when she was younger.

Ledecky, while more introverted than Franklin, is no less giving. After winning the 800 freestyle at the 2012 Olympics in the biggest upset of the competition, Ledecky, who will be a senior at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Md., wanted to show her appreciation for the USA Swimming coach, Jon Urbanchek, who helped train her between the United States Olympic trials and the Summer Games.

She found out his favorite breakfast spot in Newport Beach, Calif., near where he lives, and arranged for him to receive a gift card to the restaurant.

Shannon Vreeland joined Ledecky and Franklin on the 4×200 freestyle relay at last summer’s world championships and will again be their teammate in the event at the Pan Pacific Championships.

“Missy’s perpetually happy, and Katie, she just has such a great attitude,” Vreeland, 22, said. “The fact they go fast every time they hit the water has a lot to do with their attitudes. It makes it so easy to be around them and swim races with them.”

Evans Redux

In the last 13 months, Ledecky, who plans to attend Stanford, lowered her personal best in the 400 freestyle by a second, setting the world record Aug. 9 at the Phillips 66 National Championships in Irvine, Calif., and becoming the first woman to finish in under 3 minutes 59 seconds (3:58.86). She also shaved almost three seconds off her 800 freestyle (8:11:00) and 2.3 seconds off her 1,500 free (15:34.23) in June at the Woodlands Swim Team Senior Invitational in Shenandoah, Tex., to take ownership of both world records. At the nationals, Ledecky entered the 100 freestyle on a lark and posted the 13th-fastest time in the morning, a 54.96 that was another personal best.

Vreeland described Ledecky as “super sweet” and said, “It’s fun to watch someone like her come into their own.”

Ledecky competed in the Olympics a year before winning her first national title, and even though she was considered a surprise Olympian in 2012, she was not flying under everyone’s radar. Janet Evans, the last woman before Ledecky to hold the 400, 800 and 1,500 world records concurrently, ended a decade-plus retirement to compete in the 2012 United States trials. She knew Ledecky had a bright future when she saw the disappointment on her face over narrowly missing a berth on the Olympic team in the 400 freestyle. Ledecky finished third in 4:05, which was then her best time.

“I remember thinking, Oh, gosh, she wants this; she’s pretty hungry,” Evans said.

Evans had just turned 17 in 1988 when she won the 400 and 800 freestyles and the 400 individual medley at the Seoul Games. Her winning time in the 400, 4:03.85, stood as the world record until 2006. Ledecky is the first American to hold the mark since Evans, who said, “I hope she has great mentors in not letting the pressure get to her.”

Evans’s first international competition was the 1987 Pan Pacific Championships, also held in Australia. Like Ledecky this year, Evans went into the meet having set the world record in the 800 and 1,500 freestyle earlier in the summer. In the 800, she was upset by an Australian, Julie McDonald, who beat her by 10.93 seconds and nearly broke Evans’s world record.

The loss came as a shock to Evans, who had not stopped to consider that her fast times might make her a target.

“That was something that I needed warning about,” Evans said. “Once you get there, there’s less ‘I’m going to shock the world’ and more ‘That girl in that corner of the world knows who I am, and she’s out to get me.’ ”

Ledecky, Evans said, will have to “find her own internal motivation and then be ready for the gunners when she goes overseas.”

Ledecky’s competitors in Australia will include Lauren Boyle of New Zealand, who recently shattered the short-course meters world record in the 1,500 freestyle (Ledecky holds the long-course meters version). The Australians Jessica Ashwood and Bronte Barratt are also lying in wait for Ledecky, who accepts that her days of sneaking up on competitors are over.

“In London, I had no idea what to expect,” she said. “I would have been happy coming in first or coming in last. Now I feel like I have a little more expectations for myself.”

Franklin has siphoned off much of the attention that otherwise would be trained on Ledecky, but she senses that, too, may be about to change. At nationals, Ledecky was repeatedly asked if she was going to break world records, another first.

“I try not to pay attention to any hype or anything,” she said, adding: “I hear what people are saying, but I don’t let it overtake me. I’m enjoying racing and just relaxing and looking at it like I just want to do a best time.”

Putting the Team First

When Franklin looks at Ledecky, she sees her fearless, fierce self, circa 2010, when she qualified for the Pan Pacific team as a relative unknown. “Absolutely,” Franklin said, adding, “I’ve learned you can’t be surprised by Katie because she’s going to surprise you no matter what happens.”

Because of Franklin’s Olympic renown, she cannot catch anybody by surprise anymore with her successes. Her perceived failures also do not go unnoticed. As a freshman last year at Cal, Franklin experienced her first taste of independence — and her first heaping helping of defeat after stepping outside her backstroke comfort zone to compete in the 200 and 500 freestyles and the 200 and 400 individual medleys. She even embraced the 50-yard freestyle in a relay because that was where the Bears, who eventually placed third, were thin.

How many other Olympic champions has McKeever known who would have volunteered to forgo their best events for the good of the team? “Not many,” she said.

“I put her on the 200 free relay at N.C.A.A.s, and 10 minutes later she swam the 500 free,” McKeever said. “That’s pretty tough, and it probably cost her a personal victory in the 500, but she was like, O.K. She will do anything for the group.”

Franklin, who ignored the siren song of professionalism, and the millions of dollars in endorsements she would have been swimming in, to compete in college while pursuing a degree in communications, said the highlight of her freshman year was earning A’s in all her second-semester classes.

“You’ve put in all that work and all that effort, and you get an amazing reward for it,’ she said. “So that was really great.”

Franklin added, “Just starting to be a part of clubs and organizations on campus, sort of finding my place on the Cal campus, has been really, really fun.”

Like countless other women on the verge of adulthood, Franklin is neck-deep in treacherous waters as she seeks answers about who she is, what she stands for and where she is headed.

“I think that’s hard for anybody,” McKeever said, “let alone a world-class athlete, let alone doing it in a public arena.”

She painted a picture of Franklin leaving a class after a midterm or heading to practice and having her reverie broken by strangers who recognize her, of being singled out by fans when she rides public transportation with her swimming friends. “It takes a toll on her,” McKeever said. “It takes a toll on her teammates.”

McKeever said she had talked to Franklin about how not to let all the attention suffocate her.

“You have to figure out how to stay true to what you want to do and not be swayed by the expectations of what other people want you to do,” McKeever said.

At the long-course nationals, Franklin finished second to Ledecky in the 200 freestyle and won the 100 freestyle and the 100 and 200 backstrokes. Franklin derived satisfaction from racing — and winning — the backstrokes. Others did not see how she could be so happy, pointing out that she was nearly two seconds slower than her best time in the 200 freestyle, four seconds slower in the 200 backstroke and a second slower in the 100 backstroke.

The expectations appear to wash over Franklin like chlorinated water off her back.

“It’s different when most people know you as someone who wins a lot,” she said. “They only know you like to win things, and so when you don’t, it may seem disappointing to them or maybe it seems to them like you’re not doing what you’re supposed to. And that’s when it becomes so important to know your own goals and know what you want to do.”

She added: “If people think you can do amazing things, then why shouldn’t you believe it yourself? You can look at it as a positive way to get energy as opposed to letting it drain you.”

But a comment Franklin made in passing on the second day of nationals, after her double in the 200 freestyle and the 200 backstroke, betrayed her struggle. Her goal, she said, was “swimming instead of from a place of being afraid, from a place of just having fun and doing my best and letting whatever happens, happens.”

Franklin walked away from nationals as the women’s high-point winner. Ledecky earned the performance-of-the-meet award for her world record in the 400 freestyle. Like Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler in golf and Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray in tennis, Franklin and Ledecky possess the talent and the desire to carry each other, and their sport, far.

“It’s really awesome to have someone who’s really pushing my comfort zone,” Franklin said, “and pushing how I swim my races.”

Ledecky said, “I feel the same way about her.”