The first time Janet Evans watched her good friend Katie Ledecky swim away with the Olympic 1,500 meter race, she cried her eyes out like a broken-hearted teenager whose first love had run off with someone else.
This was back in 2021, the first time women got to swim “the mile,” as Evans and every American swimming nerd calls it, at the Olympics.
Evans, a gold medalist in the 400 and 800 in 1988 and the 800 in 1992, was Ledecky before Ledecky, so much better at distance races than everyone else it was a joke. On that night in 2021, she watched Ledecky race at the spectator-free Tokyo Games alone
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