Katie Grimes, a two-time Olympian at 17, is U.S. swimming’s rising new star

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — With their 12-year-old daughter, Katie, swimming close by, Shari and Christian Grimes stood on the pool deck speaking to Sandpipers of Nevada coach Chris Barber. Christian had simply been supplied the deputy hearth chief job in Logan, Utah, and the household was contemplating shifting there from their house in Las Vegas.

Barber is an effective listener with a relaxed head, Shari says, and the Grimes household trusts him. So she didn’t take his phrases that day calmly. Barber began by saying that Katie may transfer wherever and earn a school swimming scholarship.

“But I’m telling you right now,” he continued, “there is something different about her. And if you leave her here, she will be an Olympian.”

Shortly after, Ron Aitken, the Sandpipers CEO who coaches the group’s prime swimmers, heard what the household was contemplating. He reached out to make a pact: If they stayed in Nevada, he promised he’d stay with Sandpipers at the least till Katie graduated highschool.

The coaches’ responses had been telling. Katie was a particular expertise with extra potential than her mother and father had realized as much as that time. So Shari and Christian listened. The household stayed put.

Five years later, Grimes is likely one of the most promising swimmers within the U.S. She already made Barber look prophetic, making the Olympics as a 15-year-old in 2021, and has since gained three silver medals in pool occasions on the World Aquatics Championships. She’s additionally a world-class open-water swimmer and has already certified for the 2024 Paris Olympics within the 10-kilometer race after taking bronze on the 2023 world championships, making her the primary American athlete to safe a spot in France.

“Knowing that I’m already going to Paris is a little bit comforting, but I still really want to make it in the pool,” stated Grimes, now 17. “… I feel like I still have a lot to do.”

Grimes is rarely happy, her mother says. Shari believes there are occasions Katie must have fun her accomplishments greater than she does. But that unrelenting starvation is probably what regularly propels {the teenager} to new heights.

Katie, who’s homeschooled and the youngest of seven youngsters, spent just a little over three weeks this fall on the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Shari chaperoned for a part of the journey, and he or she stopped by the pool each every so often throughout practices. She discovered herself getting emotional seeing how arduous her daughter and the opposite swimmers work and the way a lot they sacrifice for a shot at their targets.

“But I also do believe that there is even bigger greatness inside her that hasn’t broken out yet, and I’m excited for that,” Shari stated. “Because every time we show up somewhere, that girl literally amazes us with something totally out of the blue that we weren’t expecting.”

When Katie was round 3, a Sandpipers coach observed her older brother Carter on the YMCA pool. Carter had been a gymnast till he grew too tall, and he regarded good within the water, so the coach approached Shari to ask if the household can be all in favour of becoming a member of the swim membership. Carter tried it and excelled, finally swimming on the University of Missouri.

From that second on, “Katie pretty much grew up on the pool deck,” stated Shari, who had a 12-passenger van due to her massive household and steadily drove Sandpipers swimmers to and from follow. The younger Katie was her carpool pal, sitting in her automotive seat within the again.

“She loved being around the swimmers,” Shari stated. “It was just kind of a natural progression for her to start swimming when she got to that age.”

As she emerged as an elite swimmer, Grimes made it her aim to make the 2024 Olympics in Paris. She wouldn’t have been a contender to make the Tokyo Olympics as a 14-year-old had they been held in 2020, as initially scheduled. But when these Games obtained delayed a 12 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it modified Grimes’ outlook. Her confidence was excessive, and part of her puzzled if she may make the group.

She felt finest about her 400-meter particular person medley. But when she dove in for the race the primary morning of these U.S. Olympic Trials, every part went unsuitable.

“I just completely ate it,” she stated.

Her nerves obtained the very best of her. She had a imaginative and prescient of how the race would go, and had she swam her seed time, she would have made the ultimate. Instead, she added practically 5 seconds.

Katie Ledecky and Grimes pose after qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics within the 800-meter freestyle on the U.S. Trials in June 2021. “She’s the now!” Ledecky stated of Grimes, then simply 15 years previous. (Al Bello / Getty Images)

After the race, Grimes lay in her Omaha lodge room, sobbing. Inconsolable. All Shari may do was sit on the mattress along with her daughter and let her cry.

“It was the most devastated we’ve seen her,” Shari stated.

Katie was sharing a room along with her older brother Sawyer, who swam on the University of Minnesota and in addition made the Olympic Trials. He gave her a pep speak with “not the nicest words,” Katie stated, laughing.

“Just kind of pulled me back up,” she stated.

It was precisely what she wanted. Over the approaching days, she demolished her finest time within the 1,500-meter freestyle, ending third and narrowly lacking the Olympic group. Katie Ledecky, whom Grimes had footage of on her wall as a child, instructed the younger swimmer she was the long run. Then, in Grimes’ final occasion, she eked into the ultimate of the 800-meter freestyle, establishing one of many storybook swims of the meet. In the ultimate, she out-touched Olympic medalist Haley Anderson for second place, qualifying for the Olympics.

Grimes punched the water with pleasure when she noticed her time and placement. Ledecky, who obtained first, swam over to congratulate her, lifting her competitor’s hand into the air so the gang may cheer.

“She’s the now!” Ledecky stated in her post-race interview with NBC, amending her assertion from earlier within the meet.

“You’re the future. She’s the now.”

15-year-old Katie Grimes will be a part of THE Katie Ledecky on the #TokyoOlympics this summer season. #SwimTrials21

📺 NBC pic.twitter.com/bLQQa1G8Qh

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) June 20, 2021

It was a career-altering second for Grimes, whose youth was obvious as she stood subsequent to the then-24-year-old Ledecky. Sponsorship offers would observe, and he or she was set to go midway across the globe to race on the world’s largest swim meet. Swimming, in her phrases, was “never going to be a silly little thing anymore.”

“This just got serious,” she thought to herself.

Making the Olympics at 15 was a momentous accomplishment in itself. Grimes, who was the youngest member of Team USA in Tokyo, adopted her qualification up by dropping much more time in her preliminary 800-meter freestyle swim. But she was a tad slower within the last — although nonetheless sooner than her breakout swim at trials — and missed the rostrum by a second. Had she swam her prelims time, she would have gotten bronze.

Was she glad along with her swims, contemplating how massive of an accomplishment a fourth-in-the-world end is?

“Um …” she stated, pausing for a second. “Not really.”

Grimes rode by herself on the shuttle to the Olympic village, then sat underneath a tree to name her mother and father, who had been watching from the U.S. She cried as they emphasised how proud they had been of her.

“I just felt like such a loser,” she stated.

Her fellow Team USA swimmers had been supportive, although, and Grimes finally got here to the conclusion that she had put collectively a powerful summer season.

Narrowly lacking out on the rostrum additionally gave her a carrot to chase in 2024. She stated it’s helped maintain her motivated, although she estimates she nonetheless would have had loads of drive had she come away with a medal.

Though trials and the Olympics was Grimes’ highest-profile meet of 2021, they weren’t her final formative one. When she’s coping with powerful circumstances, her mother reminds her of how she dealt with that winter’s Short Course World Championships in Abu Dhabi. Grimes contracted COVID-19 throughout the meet, forcing her to withdraw from competitors. She then needed to isolate abroad. When her household celebrated Christmas again within the U.S., the 15-year-old was alone in quarantine.

Fellow U.S. Olympian Regan Smith remembers being touched by Grimes utilizing her further time to ship Merry Christmas texts to her teammates.

“That’s something I’ll never forget,” Smith stated. “A simple story like that, it tells a lot about who she is.”

The two-plus-hour race got here all the way down to a tenth of a second. It was the 2023 world championships, and Grimes reached for the end within the 10-kilometer open water occasion. Her hand, it was determined after a photograph end assessment, touched forward of Sharon van Rouwendaal and Ana Marcela Cunha, the previous two Olympic gold medalists. She had gained bronze, making her the primary official U.S. Olympian for Paris and a two-time Olympian at age 17.

A THRILLING end as Katie Grimes grew to become the primary athlete to qualify by title for the 2024 U.S. Olympic group!@USASwimming | @TeamUSA pic.twitter.com/2Y0n0Ml1sx

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 15, 2023

That, Shari Grimes stated, was not on the household’s radar. Their daughter had amazed them as soon as once more.

The swim earned Grimes the USA Swimming Golden Goggle award for Female Race of the Year. If she will qualify for the Olympics in a pool occasion at U.S. Trials in June, she’ll be the primary U.S. lady to compete in pool and open water occasions on the identical Olympics.

But even with out her world-class swimmer resume — which may develop considerably within the coming months — Grimes wouldn’t be a typical 17-year-old. Sometimes she jokes along with her mother and father that she was born within the unsuitable decade, that she ought to’ve been born within the Nineteen Eighties.

“She’s such an old soul,” Shari stated.

Start along with her music style. She’s presently into Fleetwood Mac, Nirvana, Alice in Chains and particularly the Foo Fighters. She additionally loves basic vehicles. She’s not fairly certain how she obtained into them, although her dad doubtless has one thing to do with it. He owns a 1977 Ford Bronco, and so they bond over their basic automotive itch. Grimes fell in love with the Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40, and he or she and her dad scoured web sites searching for the automobile. Her dad finally discovered one, and Katie discovered easy methods to drive stick shift and helped substitute the automotive’s timing belt.

“I like learning about them and how to fix things, and I think they’re just cool,” she stated.

Heading into the 2024 Olympic cycle, Grimes — who plans to swim collegiately however has not but picked a faculty — feels extra nervous than she did heading into 2021. She’s not going to catch anybody unexpectedly this time. She’s a identified contender, and he or she’s set expectations for herself.

“It’s like, ‘Well, I did it when I was 15, why can’t I do it when I was 18?’” she stated. “But honestly that’s just the intrusive thoughts that you can completely block out. … I’ve gone faster and I’ve gotten better in practice and am working really hard, so there’s no reason for me to be nervous. Just trust in your training and trust that I’ve progressed and I’m smarter and am able to handle things better.”

The expertise of the final Olympic cycle, in addition to her pool and open water meets since, ought to assist her navigate all of it.

“I think she keeps learning how resilient she really is,” her mother stated. “I think she feels she has so much more inside her that she wants to show the world.”

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(Top photograph of Grimes and her bronze medal from the 10-kilometer open water swim on the 2023 world championships in July: DBM / Insidefoto / Mondadori Portfolio through Getty Images)