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 at her home in Laguna Beach, Calif.
Why the tears?
For decades, she and every other world-class female distance swimmer had gotten blown off when they pushed to swim the longest race in the pool, just like the men could. Always, there was another excuse. No room in the program. Not enough beds for additional athletes.
They heard something else — a barely veiled message that most women couldn’t race that far within a time worth watching, even though they did it in college, at other international meets and all the time in practice.
There is little doubt that Evans would have won two or three more gold medals had the 1,500 been a part of the Olympic program when she was at her peak, or…
