JUST ADD WATER

At 27, an Olympian and record-holding swimmer reviews her journey to excellence.

Ledecky was an up-and-coming club swimmer in Washington, D.C., when her coach asked her to begin keeping a journal, recording details of her practices and "something special" she did each day. He said she should feel free to "jot down anything else she wanted to write." An extraordinarily focused athlete whose life has been blessedly free from tragedy, the young swimmer had no dirt to report, and that is also the case with her memoir. "My goal was to better myself through swimming,” she writes. “To discover who I was and what I was made of. The pool provided the ideal instrument for that journey. The Olympic medals, the world records, those are incredi­ble achievements. But I’m more gratified by how swimming has shaped me. How the pursuit has molded me into the best version of myself." This sets the tone: upbeat, generic, sometimes a little stuffy in the manner of a self-conscious term paper. On competing alongside Michael Phelps for the first time, she writes, "To say that experience was surreal is to do a disservice to the word." Between the chapters covering the phases of her career, Ledecky offers sections on each of her immediate family and grandparents, all exceptional people with rare drive—among them a Czech immigrant, a Midwestern farm girl, and a Jewish woman in New York. Though family history is important to her, this hagiography gets to be a bit much. However, for those interested in granular detail about Ledecky's stroke, training techniques, motivational habits, experiences with the Covid-19 pandemic and drug testing, and thrilling wins and successes, this book will serve as relevant preparation for watching her in this summer's Paris Olympics.

A trove of detail for aspiring swimmers and serious fans of the sport.