It never crossed Erin Gemmell’s little 8-year-old mind back in 2013 that the costume she chose for Halloween might someday be seen as the starting point for a great and beautiful circle of life, one that would come closed a decade later at a swimming pool halfway around the globe. Gemmell, at the time, wasn’t even sure she liked swimming.
But she knew lots of her friends were dressing up as their favorite superheroes, and her favorite superhero was a then-16-year-old swimmer and Olympic gold medalist who was coached by Gemmell’s dad. Her friends’ costumes featured capes and tights. Hers featured goggles and a Team USA swim cap with “LEDECKY” on the side, donated by the superhero herself.
A decade later, Gemmell, now 18, chuckles at the picture of her 8-year-old Halloween costume when her dad, Bruce, pulls it up on his phone. Back then, she worshiped Katie Ledecky. Now, well, she still sort of worships her, but she is also Ledecky’s teammate.
On Thursday in Fukuoka, Japan, Gemmell and Ledecky will form half of Team USA’s entry in the women’s 4x200-meter freestyle relay at the World Aquatic Championships, seeking a gold medal that would be Gemmell’s first at worlds and Ledecky’s 21st dating from 2013.
“It’s just super exciting,” said Gemmell, a University of Texas commit, who, like Ledecky, attended Stone Ridge in Bethesda, Md. “I’ve been around her and have looked up to her for so long. I just think it’s so neat that we wound up swimming some of the same events … so we get that experience of competing together.”
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Ledecky, 26, and Gemmell secured their relay spots by finishing second and fourth, respectively, in the individual 200-meter freestyle at the U.S. championships last month in Indianapolis, where the top six finishers earned berths. Both trailed winner Claire Weinstein, who touched the wall in 1 minute 55.26 seconds. Although the coaches have some discretion with relay lineups, it is expected that Weinstein, 16, and third-place finisher Bella Sims, 18, will join Gemmell and Ledecky on Team USA’s entry in Thursday’s final.
In Indianapolis, Ledecky was out-touched by Weinstein in the 200 free by just two-hundredths of a second. That was about how long it took her and Gemmell, who was nearly a full second off Weinstein’s winning time, to realize they would be swimming on the relay together in Fukuoka. Immediately after checking the results on the scoreboard, Ledecky, in Lane 4, reached across the lane line to wrap Gemmell, in Lane 3, in a hug.
“It’s been so cool to be in a lane next to her numerous times now, and we’re on a relay together this summer,” said Ledecky, whose first of seven career Olympic gold medals came in the 800-meter freestyle at the 2012 London Games. “It’s pretty surreal to have that opportunity. I get goose bumps when we start practicing relay starts as a group.”
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For Gemmell, the berth on the worlds team was her first for a major, senior-level international meet. It also avenged a devastating result from the year before, when she finished seventh in the 200 free at team trials in Greensboro, N.C., missing a world championships relay slot by three-tenths of a second. (USA Swimming later apologized to Gemmell for failing to add her to the team once Ledecky scratched the individual 200 free at worlds since it effectively moved Gemmell up to sixth place — which historically has been enough to earn a relay spot.)
“It was very disappointing at the time. [Making the worlds team] was a goal she had set for herself,” Bruce Gemmell said. He first rose to prominence as Ledecky’s coach from 2013 to 2016, a period that included Ledecky’s four-gold-medal showing at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and now coaches his daughter.
Asked how he navigated Erin’s disappointment as both her dad and her coach, he said, “The parent wants to hug them and hold them and reassure them everything’s going to be okay — which, of course, it’s going to be. But sometimes the coach is — I don’t want to say as frustrated as the athlete, but you wish it had gone differently.”
Erin Gemmell remembers it differently: “Even if I wanted to wallow in [the disappointment], I wouldn’t have been able to,” she said. “AP exams were the next week. We had to drive home, and I had AP Psych that Monday. I listened to test reviews the whole ride home.”
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In the pool, Gemmell channeled her disappointment into what turned out to be a monster summer of swimming, highlighted by six gold medals and three meet records at the Junior Pan-Pacific Championships in Hawaii and a win in the 400 free at U.S. nationals.
“Being sad wasn’t going to help anything,” she said. “It was more like, ‘How can we not do that again?’ ”
Gemmell’s family history makes it seem as if she were born to be a champion swimmer. Bruce Gemmell was a University of Michigan standout who later worked as an engineer before eventually landing back in the sport as a coach. Her mother, Barbara, was a three-time Big Ten backstroke champion at Northwestern. And her brother, Andrew, who also trained under Bruce, made the U.S. Olympic team at the 2012 London Games in the 1,500 free.
But her success was far from a given. Her parents and brother all knew firsthand the mental and physical toll required of being an elite swimmer, and they tried to steer young Erin toward other sports. Ledecky, in fact, remembers 8-year-old Erin as a reluctant swimmer who wasn’t sure she had a future in that sport.
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“But obviously she did,” Ledecky said. “And she’s continued to get better and better. It’s been so cool to have a front-row seat for that.”
At home, Gemmell said she navigates the duality of the father/coach dynamic by insisting there be no swimming talk around the dinner table. When Bruce needs to breach that imaginary wall, he typically tells her, “Your coach needs to speak with you for a minute.”
“And I’ll be like, ‘Okay, what does my coach have to say?’ ” Erin Gemmell said. “For me, it’s not as weird as people think it is.”
In Japan, the Americans have a typically stacked lineup ready to go for the 4x200 free relay — featuring Ledecky and the three teenage phenoms. But they will be decided underdogs against Australia, which, led by defending Olympic 200 free gold medalist Ariarne Titmus, set a world record in that relay last summer at the Commonwealth Games.
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On Wednesday in Fukuoka, 19-year-old Aussie sprinter Mollie O’Callaghan not only edged Titmus in the individual 200 free with a time of 1:52.85, but in the process broke what was the oldest women’s world record in the sport, the 1:52.98 of Italy’s Federica Pellegrini from 2009. The sport will be on world record watch again Thursday in the relay, with all eyes on the Aussies’ lane.
And while Gemmell will be seeking her first world championships medal, the relay assignment also gives her a large role in furthering Ledecky’s incomparable legacy. Having already earned a gold in the women’s 1,500 free and a silver in the 400 free earlier in the meet, Ledecky now has 24 career medals at worlds, with 20 of them gold — both marks representing all-time records for female swimmers.
On Thursday, for the first time, Gemmell will line up next to Ledecky at the starting blocks with the Stars and Stripes on their swim caps, in a sense still dressing up like her favorite superhero.
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