An Olympic Silver Medalist In the Pool, Katie Grimes Finishes Top 15 In The Marathon Swim
by Peggy Shinn
PARIS — Open-water swimmers face all sorts of conditions. Ocean tides and currents, jelly fish, cold water, warm water, murky lakes. At the Olympic Games Paris 2024, they faced a mean current.
A two-time Olympian, Katie Grimes — who won a silver medal in the 400-meter individual medley earlier in the Games — finished 15th after six laps of the 10-kilometer course mapped out on the River Seine. Six laps riding the current, six laps fighting it.
She finished in 2:06.29.6 — just under three minutes off the pace set by Dutch swimmer Sharon van Rouwendaal, who won her second Olympic gold medal in marathon swimming and third medal total.
“That was, like, the hardest thing I've ever done, ever,” said Grimes, who at age 18 had hoped to win Olympic medals in both the pool and marathon swim at the Paris Games.
“Just the current,” she explained. “That's something I've never done before.”
In her first Olympic Games, Mariah Denigan finished the 10K course just behind Grimes in 16th place. The 21-year-old from Walton, Kentucky, sat about 30 seconds off the lead for the first half of the race but then ended up finishing just behind her teammate, in 2:06:42.9.
“I wasn't really happy with the place, but I'm proud of myself for how I finished it,” said Denigan. “It was definitely like the roughest currents that I've ever experienced and definitely the toughest race I've ever done.
“It was a race of experience, and that's what shows on the podium. At the end of the day, I'm just proud of how I competed today.”
In addition to her three Olympic medals, van Rouwendaal is a two-time world champion, most recently at the 2024 world championships in February. The Dutch swimmer made her marathon swimming debut a decade ago.
Open-water swimming — also known as marathon swimming, internationally — made its Olympic debut at the Olympic Games Beijing 2008, and Team USA has won one medal in the discipline since then: Haley Anderson’s silver medal at the Olympic Games London 2012. The Paris 2024 version is the first time the Olympic event has been contested in a river.
The Seine’s current — listed at one meter per second — turned out to be the real opponent at the Paris Games. The speed of the current does not sound like a lot, said Grimes, but the swimmers had to adapt their stroke rates to keep up with it.
“I think it took us twice as long to come back up [river] as it did going down,” she explained. “So yeah, it was a big difference.”
Grimes got into swimming as a young child because she wanted to do what her five older brothers were doing. Within a year of her first swimming lessons, she joined the Sandpipers of Nevada, a swim program in Las Vegas that produces world-class distance freestylers.
Grimes blossomed in the program, qualifying for her first Olympic team in 2020 at age 15. At the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, she finished fourth in the 800-meter freestyle, just over one second off the podium. Her hero (and namesake), Katie Ledecky, won the 800 in Tokyo, and Grimes swam in the lane next to her in the final.
Since then, Grimes has won four world championship medals in distances from 400-meter to 10K. Most recently, she claimed a bronze medal in marathon swimming at the 2023 world championships.
In the pool in Paris, Grimes finished second in the 400-meter individual medley early last week and hoped to add another Olympic medal in the marathon swim.
“I enjoy doing both [pool and open water swimming],” said Grimes. “That's something I've done in the world championships quite a few times before, so I'm used to it. … It's challenging trying to spread myself thin, but it's worth it.”
From the start of the marathon swim early Thursday morning, Grimes and Denigan were trying to read the currents; in the first leg, the race went downstream. The Americans train mostly in swimming pools back home, and in marathon competitions, typically compete in oceans or lakes, not rivers.
“I would say people definitely had a smart plan and just picked a different line than I did,” said Grimes of the 10km race start in the Seine. “It just got really bunched up, and I couldn't really see what was going on in front of me. That’s usually how a water start goes. But with the added effects of the current, it was a bit faster.”
After the first lap, Grimes was a minute down on the leaders, but she fought her way back to just 30 seconds-or-so down. But at the halfway mark, the gap grew again.
The field stretched out on the downstream legs, then bunched up coming upstream as the competitors tried to find a break from the current in the wake of another. As she fought for the best conditions, Grimes swallowed a lot of water.
“Nobody wants to be having the current going straight towards them,” she explained. “So it was best to be behind somebody (coming upstream). That's why we were almost a single file coming straight up the wall, because that was the best place to have somebody breaking that wake for you. The more people you had in front of you, the easier it was.”
Both Grimes and Denigan will leave Paris with a thirst for more — though perhaps in a more forgiving open-water venue. Grimes is ready for a vacation but is “even more excited to just get back into training.”
Denigan, who attends and trains at Indiana University in Bloomington, pointed out that Team USA has youth on its side in marathon swimming. Grimes is 18, Denigan 21.
“I think that we have a lot more to give,” she said, “and I'm just excited for our future.”
An award-winning freelance writer based in Vermont, Peggy Shinn is in Paris covering her eighth Olympic Games. She has contributed to TeamUSA.org since its inception in 2008.