Kate Douglass wins gold in 200-meter breaststroke at 2024 Paris Olympics

PARIS — Kate Douglass, an understated star from the University of Virginia, won gold in the 200-meter breaststroke here at the 2024 Olympics on Thursday.

The 22-year-old Douglass outraced South Africa’s Tatjana Smith and touched in 2:19.24 to clinch Team USA's fourth swimming gold of these Games.

Fellow American Lilly King, the silver medalist in this race at Tokyo 2021, finished eighth.

Douglass was a bronze medalist in the 200 individual medley three years ago.

Her gold was the culmination of a steady, unflashy, years-long rise to the top of swimming. The sport came naturally to her as a teen, but it never anointed her a prodigy; it never — until now — made her a household name. “I was always pretty sure of my place as, like, not on the top,” Douglass said recently. “I was a pretty good swimmer, but I wasn't one of the best. And … I was just content with that.”

In 2021, she was an Olympic bubbler. “The goal was to make the team,” she recalled.

When she did, and when she made a podium, too, her approach to the sport began to change.

She had always been “so fluid and versatile,” as Todd DeSorbo, her coach at Virginia, said. But oftentimes, she was the last to realize her talent. “She didn't know what she was capable of,” DeSorbo explained. As a result, when she’d hit an absurd time, “there was a little bit of shock,” DeSorbo said.

Over the past three years, though, her self-confidence bloomed. And she kept getting better. She added muscle. She contributed to four straight NCAA championships at Virginia.

And she never limited herself to one of swimming’s four strokes, or to a range of distances. She won many a medley. She won medals in freestyle and breaststroke, which require two completely different rhythms and skill sets. She won them at 200 meters, 100 meters and even 50.

She won her first world championship in 2023, in the 200 IM. She also learned to deal with the spotlight and pressure that accompanied the times. In 2021, at the Olympics, “I felt like I was gonna throw up before [the 200 IM],” she said recently. “Since then, I've gotten better at calming my nerves.”

“Now,” she said this spring, “I'm excited to race.”

She strode into U.S. trials and won all three of her events, the 200 IM, 200 breaststroke and 100 freestyle.

She eventually dropped the 100 free to home in on the two 200s.

And on Thursday here at Paris La Défense Arena, she won the first of them.