Katie Ledecky returned to Stanford, her alma mater, to give a 21-minute keynote address at the commencement for the university’s largest graduating class in history.
Ledecky, 28, noted she is no more than seven years older than the graduates: 1,110 earning doctoral degrees, 2,655 master’s degrees and 2,140 bachelor’s degrees.
“I can tell you everything you need to know about freestyle and flip turns,” she said. “I cannot tell you everything you need to know about life.”
Ledecky graduated from Stanford in 2020 with a major in psychology and a minor in political science.
In her speech, she reflected on her first Olympics in London in 2012, when she was the youngest U.S. athlete across all sports at age 15.
She remembered then-Prince William and Princess Kate being in the crowd for the 800m freestyle final. She remembered being in a lane next to the defending Olympic gold medalist and home favorite Rebecca Adlington of Great Britain.
“So I know the crowd will be chanting Bec-ky, Bec-ky,” she said. “I had programmed myself to think they are shouting Le-deck-y, Le-deck-y.”
Ledecky mentioned that coaches advised her not to go out too fast. Yet she took the lead from the start.
“About midway through the race, I remember thinking, where is everybody?” she said. “There’s a brief second where I wonder if I’m doing something wrong, like I’ve gone out too fast. Then I tell myself, just keep going. And I did. I won by over four seconds.”
The anecdote was part of Ledecky’s theme: how to go the distance in whatever field the graduates choose.
“You don’t have to win the race,” said Ledecky, who estimated she has swum 26,000 miles in her life to set up about 5 1/2 miles of Olympic finals. “You just need to win your race. And winning your race means falling in love with the process. Fall in love with the process, not the podium.”
She ended her speech by saying, “Take your mark, and go out there and make your mark.”
“I am a little nervous,” Biles said at the beginning of her speech.
