My guest today, Kate Douglas, is one of the best swimmers in the world.

She brought home two gold medals and two silver medals from the Paris Olympics.

And she's one of the most celebrated collegiate swimmers of all time,

leaving the University of Virginia

to three straight national championships

and twice being named the best female college swimmer.

It is so hard mentally and there are definitely days in practice where I'm like, I hate this, I want to quit.

But now that I'm a professional swimmer and I'm choosing to do this. I like it, but the sport itself, it's a tough one.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Leavitt.

If you listen to last week's episode, you know that the University of Virginia Swim team has benefited from mathematician Ken Ono's data analysis and modeling.

Kate is uniquely positioned to talk about that because she's not just a swimmer and one of the people whose data was being analyzed,

but she's also a scholar and a data scientist herself.

Now I assume you've been dreaming of Olympic success for a long time. How does a reality

differ from what you imagined when you were 13 year old? Better or worse? This summer was something I only could

have dreamt of as a kid I never thought would really come true but now that I've

lived it you know that was my second Olympic Games and I'm surrounded by people who have

also been to the Olympics and won medals.

It feels less exciting than I thought it would be.

Obviously, in person, it was such a surreal moment but at the same time we walked on deck in Paris and we were just like a little bit

underwhelmed by everything we've done it. We've been to huge arenas with huge crowds and

it's just another swim meet. Now everyone complains about the Olympic Village.

Is it as bad as a report suggests?

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