Using Data to Win Gold

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, leading the University of Virginia to three straight national championships and twice being named the best female college swimmer.

DOUGLASS: 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 Levitt.

If you listen to last week’s episode, you know that the University of Virginia swim team has benefitted 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 is being analyzed, but she’s also a scholar and a data scientist herself.

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LEVITT: Now I assume you’ve been dreaming of Olympic success for a long time. How does the reality differ from what you imagined when you were a 13-year-old? Better or worse?

DOUGLASS: This summer was something I only could have dreamt of as a kid. I never thought that 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 before. We’ve been to huge arenas with huge crowds and it’s just another swim meet.

LEVITT: Now everyone complains about the Olympic Village. Is it as bad as the reports suggest?

DOUGLASS: It’s not terrible. Obviously it’s not the comfiest bed I’ve ever been in.

LEVITT: It looked like it was made out of cardboard when I saw pictures.

DOUGLASS: Yeah, they were literally made out of cardboard, but the bed frame wasn’t really the issue — but it was really the mattress. Team U.S.A. tried to do their best to make it as comfortable as possible for us. They got us mattress toppers. They got us air conditioning. But it definitely wasn’t the nicest accommodations I’ve ever had for a swim meet.

LEVITT: It’s so strange to me that you and the other athletes work so hard, you devote your life to getting to this event, and then they put you in this subpar living situation when you’re trying to do your peak performance. Did you consider renting an AirBnB instead? It seemed like that wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

DOUGLASS: Well, actually, U.S.A. Swimming was able to get us some hotel rooms near the pool venue. ‘Cause the bus ride to the village ended up being a long ride and it wasn’t the most comfortable to sit in an un-airconditioned bus for 30 minutes before you’re about to dive in and race. And so we were very lucky that we had the means to be able to do that.

LEVITT: So you won gold in the 200-meter breaststroke. The finals were on August 1st, and I think pretty late at night, like nine o’clock at night in Paris. When would you arrive at the pool for a nine o’clock race?

DOUGLASS: If I’m racing at 9 o’clock, I usually try to arrive two hours before, so I’d probably arrive around 7 p.m. I’ll usually stretch for a little bit and then about an hour and ten minutes before my race is when I get into warm up. And my warm up usually takes me about 30 to 35 minutes, and then after I’ll then go put my racing suit on. And then I’ll just put on my parka, put on my sweatpants and shoes and stay warm until I have to go to the ready room about 15 minutes before the race goes off. 

LEVITT: Now, when you swim the breaststroke, what can you see and hear? Are you aware of the crowd? Can you tell where you are versus the competitors?

DOUGLASS: In breaststroke I’m more aware of what’s going on around me versus other strokes because I find breaststroke pretty relaxing. Even in a race when I’m trying pretty hard, it’s just very quiet when I’m in the water and I still glide a bit. I don’t have to move my body as fast as in the other strokes. I do remember this summer taking a moment and hearing the crowd as I was swimming a little bit and I think that definitely helped get me a little bit pumped up while I was racing and it was cool.

LEVITT: So what do you think about during the race? Do you have mechanical thoughts? Or do you try to keep your brain free? What are you thinking?

DOUGLASS: For 200 breaststrokes specifically, I actually have a stroke count that I stick to and that I want to hit to be able to go a best time. And so I dive in and just start counting my strokes. And I focus on hitting the stroke count that I want for each lap. And that’s the only thing that’s going through my brain while I’m swimming.

LEVITT: Do you do the same number of strokes on each of the laps?

DOUGLASS: No, I add a few strokes each lap. From the start, you get a little bit more off the wall, and so you have to add after the start, after the first lap. And then, as you get more tired, you have to start taking more strokes because you’re not getting as much out of each stroke, and so my stroke count goes up each lap.

LEVITT: Now I noticed you weren’t exactly in the center of your lane. You are a little away from Tanya Smith, who was your closest competitor. Is that on purpose or is that just an accident?

DOUGLASS: That’s not on purpose. That’s actually just a habit of mine. When we swim in practice, we have multiple people in a lane, so we swim in a way that’s called circle swimming, where you swim down just on the right side of the lane. So you swim down on the right side, and then people will come back on the left side. So when I’m in a race, I have a hard time gearing away from that and swimming in the middle of the lane. My coaches definitely don’t think it’s the most efficient way to swim, but at this point, there’s not much changing that.

LEVITT: So you were in second place after the first split and then you completely dominated coming off the wall. Really every time on the turn, you seemed to gain half a body length. Have you always been really good at the transition off the wall, the pullout?

DOUGLASS: My push off the wall is a lot stronger than most people’s. I think out of the water, I have the best vertical jump. When we do box jumps I usually do the height that the boys do. Not a lot of other girls can jump that high.

LEVITT: Can you dunk a basketball?

DOUGLASS: I’ve never tried. I don’t know if I could though—

LEVITT: I bet it would be close. I bet you could dunk a tennis ball.

DOUGLASS: I might be able to, you never know.

LEVITT: So you ended up winning the race. Honestly, watching it, at the end, it didn’t even seem like you were breathing hard. Is that just an illusion? You seemed completely normal like smiling and not huffing and puffing at all.

DOUGLASS: For breaststroke, I do find that I’m not out of breath as other strokes, because again, like I said, I don’t have to move my body as fast. It’s more strength in my arms and my legs than just trying to move my arms and legs as fast as possible. And so that’s why I’m able to stay more calm and relaxed and I don’t get as out of breath. I definitely was tired after that race, but yeah, you’re right. I wasn’t huffing and puffing like I would be after 200 I.M. or 100 free. And I think that’s one of the reasons why I do love the 200 breaststroke is because it just doesn’t hurt my body the same way that other events do.

LEVITT: Yeah. Now one remarkable thing about you is that you are so versatile. You won the gold in the 200-meter breaststroke — we’ve been talking about. You won the Olympic trials in the 100-meter freestyle, but then you decided not to actually compete in that individual event in Paris. You were the N.C.A.A. champion in the 100-yard butterfly and the 50-yard freestyle. How do you decide what events to compete in in the end?

DOUGLASS: It’s definitely a difficult decision ‘cause there’s a lot of events that I would love to swim, but a lot of it has to do with how the events line up throughout the meet. That’s the reason I chose to not swim the 100 free at the Olympics was ‘cause the final conflicted with the 200-breaststroke semifinal and I did that double at Olympic trials and it was just really hard on my body. It just felt horrible and it was the hardest 200 breaststroke I’ve ever done. When it came to the Olympics and it came to the chance of winning Olympic gold, my best shot was in the 200 breaststroke, and it wasn’t worth the risk of swimming the 100 free before it. I’m really happy with that decision, but it is sad at the same time because I would have loved to gotten a chance to race the 100 free. I would have loved to swim the 50 free too but that also conflicted with the 200 I.M. and so I had to choose one or the other and I chose the I.M. this year.

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Olympian Kate Douglass after this short break. In the second part of our conversation, we’ll hear about Kate’s academic exploits, working with her mentor, math professor Ken Ono.

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LEVITT: So given the intensity of your swim training, it’s amazing that you’re also a standout in the classroom. You were the A.C.C. Women’s Swimming and Diving Scholar Athlete of the Year in both 2022 and 2023. And I think people will be shocked to hear you’re currently pursuing a master’s degree in statistics at the University of Virginia. And you’re not just messing around either. This spring, you had two papers accepted to academic journals. And that is extremely rare for a master’s student. So tell me, how do you compare the thrill of getting a paper accepted at a journal to the thrill of winning a big race?

DOUGLASS: Yeah, that’s a funny question. All this academic stuff I pushed to the side a little bit. I feel like it’s just something that I’ve been doing to keep my mind off of swimming and help prepare me for life after swimming, but I don’t really feel as proud of my accomplishments with that as I probably should.

LEVITT: It’s funny because oftentimes people say the opposite — the thing that they’re the best at, in your case, swimming, you’re world class, it comes naturally and it’s very blasé. But then things that are completely unimportant, like getting an academic paper published, because you don’t think of yourself as the best academic in the world, oftentimes people get really excited about their hobbies. In this case, it sounds like academics is kind of your hobby. But I got to say, I got to say, there aren’t very many people whose hobby involves writing papers with titles like, “The Plain Partition Function Abides by Benford’s Law.” Can you explain that at all to regular people are not really?

DOUGLASS: I remember trying to explain it to my boyfriend and my parents and about two minutes in, they were like, “I don’t really want to hear this anymore.” And I was like, “Okay, fine.” I definitely was excited about that project with Dr. Ono because going into it, I remember him trying to explain it to me a little bit And wow, it just went in one ear out the other. Like you say, swimming does come more naturally, and so with this stuff, I’ve had to work a lot harder to understand it because I wasn’t just naturally able to grasp everything that Dr. Ono was telling me, and so I do think I was very proud of how hard I was able to work to put together that paper that we did.

LEVITT: Well, I’ll tell you, I tried to read that, and I’m a Ph.D. economist and I know a little bit about math. My God, it makes no sense at all to me. Each individual line, if I spend five minutes, kind of makes sense to me. But then getting from that line to the next, forget it. I think there are very few people on the planet who can understand math at that level. So I find that personally very very impressive.

DOUGLASS: Dr. Ono has helped me a lot with understanding that because I do feel the same way when he gives me, like, a paper to look over or something. I feel like I read it through and I’m like, I have no idea what I just read.

LEVITT: Now, the University of Virginia Women’s Swim Team has been completely dominant in recent years. I’m sure there are many reasons why that’s the case. But one factor that’s gotten a lot of media attention recently is the rigorous data analysis initiated by Dr. Ono — Ken Ono, the mathematician we were talking about. Now, I know it’s hard to assign causality, but if you had to guess, of the improvements you’ve personally seen since you arrived at the University of Virginia, what would it be? What percent would you assign to the data driven analysis? A big percent, a small percent?

DOUGLASS: Maybe a small but pretty decent percentage of time drops. It’s not exactly everything that he’s found in my stroke, but looking at all the data that he does and the ways that we can improve strokes and improve efficiency has helped me just be more aware of everything in the water. I feel like we’ve been able to see that just little changes can affect so much. And so I feel like now I’m very aware just about my position when I swim and the way that I move my arms. I’ve noticed that all these little things matter and I feel like I think really hard about trying to make my strokes as efficient as possible and I think that’s been a huge reason why I’ve been able to drop so much time in the last few years.

LEVITT: Do you study your own data?

DOUGLASS: I wouldn’t say I study my own data. I definitely have looked at it with Dr. Ono at times and we talk about ways that I can improve and things that are not looking so good in my stroke. But I let him do the data analytics work because when I’m in the water I like to just focus more on just trying to fix things and just be less aware of everything that I’m doing wrong.

LEVITT: Do you do a lot of experimentation when you have the accelerometers on you? So say, “Alright this isn’t what I usually do, but let me just try doing something different. Maybe it will be a little better.” Or is it much more, they can see in your stroke, from the accelerometer, some tiny defect — they want you to move your head a few degrees this way or that way — so it’s less wholesale experimentation and more almost like perfecting something that’s very close to perfect?

DOUGLASS: Yeah, when we’re looking at acceleration data and we can see that something’s off, I’ll then try to do it again a different way. I’ll try to move my hand a different way to try to see if we can fix that and if it helps my stroke at all.

LEVITT: What share of the time when you’re in the water practicing are you wearing the accelerometers? A lot or just rarely?

DOUGLASS: Usually about once a month or once every two months Dr. Ono will come in and we’ll look at accelerometers or the hand sensors and see if anything’s changed or improved. I think if you’re doing it every day, then you’re only going to see maybe minor changes, maybe no changes at all. And so it’s better, I think, to collect the data, look at it, and then give it time to see if you can fix something or change something in your stroke and then come back maybe a month later and look at it again.

LEVITT: In practice, I presume fairly often you actually carry out races, say the 200-meter breaststroke, under the same conditions as you would do it in competition, where you’re flat out and you start from the starting block and whatnot. Are you as fast in practice as you are in the races? Or is there something special about the adrenaline and the excitement that gives you an extra boost when you’re in a big competition?

DOUGLASS: We’re definitely not as fast in practice as we are in a race. For big competitions, we usually taper beforehand, which is, we’ll take down the yardage, do less practices, and things will start to get a little bit easier. So then you feel fresh when you get up on the blocks and you race. In normal everyday practice, you’re more tired and your body’s more broken down from weightlifting and just doing practices back to back. We kind of all have, I think, a different set of times that we try to hit in practice, but no one can be really as fast as they are in a race.

LEVITT: It’s too bad for you that swimming financially isn’t more like tennis or golf, where pros can make a ton of money. There are some payments, but they’re small in comparison. You get prize money for your four Olympic medals and winning at the world championships. It’s not really a way to get rich though, right?

DOUGLASS: Yeah, no. I definitely have more money right now than I would if I had just a regular job, like most of my friends, but it’s not something that is, you know, going to keep me afloat for a while. At some point I am going to have to move on because I think the thing with prize money and trying to live off of it is also, you have no idea going into the year how much you’re going to end up making at the end of the summer. Yeah, for swimming, it could be a decent amount, but it could also be something very minimal.  

LEVITT: Michael Phelps has certainly gotten big endorsements. I heard Katie Ledecky has gotten some pretty lucrative contracts. It would be good if you could get on that gravy train.

DOUGLASS: Yeah, unfortunately I’m not really at the same level as Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky, but yeah, they’re definitely doing just fine.

You’re listening to People I (Mostly) Admire with Steve Levitt and his conversation with Olympic swimmer Kate Douglass. After this short break, they’ll return to talk about what retirement looks like for a gold-medal winner.

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Swimming has dominated Kate’s life since she was in grade school. I imagine much of her identity is tied up in being a swimmer. So what’s it like to ponder retirement when swimming is all you’ve ever known?

LEVITT: I got to spend a fair amount of time around a golfer named Luke Donald. He was the number one golfer in the world at that time. And I asked him once, “Do you like golf?” And he paused and he thought about it for a while and he gave a really interesting answer. He said, “I like competing. I like the feeling of having the chance to win a tournament on Sunday.” And he didn’t explicitly say it, but I really got the feeling he didn’t actually like golf that much. So let me ask you: Do you like swimming?

DOUGLASS: Now I would say yes, I do, but a few years ago I would have said, “No, I hate this sport. It’s literally the worst.” It is so hard mentally. And there are definitely days in practice where I’m like, “I hate this. I want to quit. Like this sport sucks.” But now that I’m a professional swimmer, I think I just love competing. I love racing and obviously the feeling of winning is amazing and that’s why I want to go to practice every day. I think I’m slightly addicted to the grind of practice and the grind of just being in shape and seeing myself get better and I think that’s part of the reason why. But the sport itself, it’s a tough one and I totally understand when people say they don’t like it.

LEVITT: I’m sure you must think sometimes about retiring, but psychologically, I imagine that’s got to be really scary, right? For your whole life, I suspect, your primary identity has been Kate Douglass, swimmer. And it’s hard, always hard for everybody to quit everything. But the idea of being Kate Douglass, former competitive swimmer, a lot of athletes, I think, struggle to make that transition.

DOUGLASS: Definitely. I’ve seen so many of my friends who were college swimmers retire and I feel like you have a bit of an identity crisis when you stop your sport just ‘cause every single day, you wake up and you go to practice for that sport and then all of a sudden one day it just stops. That’s definitely something that obviously will be difficult for me when the time comes. And honestly, the hardest part for a lot of swimmers is figuring out how to work out after being done with swimming because for your whole life, your job basically, is working out and then you have to figure out ways to do that on your own. I think that’s going to be the hardest part for me. 

LEVITT: So you majored in statistics and you minored in data science. And now you’re doing a degree in statistics. Can you imagine a life as a data scientist, or do you think that your path will take you somewhere else?

DOUGLASS: I definitely see myself using my degree and in my job in the future. I think it’s just something that I enjoy doing. And so I would like to make a career out of it somehow.

LEVITT: I don’t know if you’re an entrepreneur, but it seems like a really obvious intersection of your expertise in the world of data science and in the world of swimming would be to take the kind of tools that Ken Ono and U.V.A. have been developing and turn it into a business. There must be tens of thousands of 12-year-old Kate Douglass-wannabes who would love to be analyzed and whose parents would pay a whole lot of money to have accelerometers attached and to figure out how to swim better. Have you thought about turning that into a business at all?

DOUGLASS: I guess that’s always been an idea, sticking with swimming and using data analytics and swimming and continuing that. But I also think there’s a part of me that’s like, maybe when I retire from swimming, I might just want to step away from the sport for the most part and make sure the rest of my life is away from the pool. I wouldn’t be mad if I didn’t have anything to do with swimming after I retire.  

LEVITT: You should come work with me. I’m always on the lookout for a good data scientist. And I certainly pay a lot more than the Olympics do.

DOUGLASS: I bet you do. Yeah, when I’m finally done with my graduate degree, maybe we’ll think about that.

LEVITT: Okay, definitely dropped me a line.

LEVITT: The 2028 Olympics are in Los Angeles, right? 

DOUGLASS: Yes.

LEVITT: What do you think the odds are that we’ll see you there?

DOUGLASS: Maybe 50-50. I’ve had a hard time committing to swimming to 2028. I would love to be able to swim until 2028 if my body allows me. Four years is — it’s a long time, especially with swimming. It takes a huge toll on your body. I’m going to keep swimming this year. I’ll probably swim next year, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. My mind might change.

LEVITT: Do you think there’s any chance you’ll follow the Dara Torres path? She swam in five Olympics.

DOUGLASS: Absolutely not. If I did make it to 2028, that would be the last year. It’s been something that I feel like I’ve talked about for so long is how, again, I like swimming, but it’s not like it’s the greatest thing ever. I’m going to be excited to finally be done swimming soon. I never thought I would make a career out of it. And I don’t really want to be that old swimmer at meets where people are, like, whispering, “When’s she going to retire?” 

LEVITT: So imagine you’re 50-years-old. How many hours a year do you think you will spend in a pool?

DOUGLASS: That’s a good question. I think I will still swim when I’m older, maybe a little bit. It is honestly just really good for my body. It’s really good for everyone’s body. It’s not as hard on your joints and your muscles. And so I think it’s an exercise that I will keep doing, but who knows? It might be stressful to be in the water and be out of shape and be slower than I used to be.  

LEVITT: Can you imagine being the 55-year-old in the water, where you got to be in the slow lane because you can’t keep up with the other people.

DOUGLASS: Yeah, I think I’ll have higher expectations than what I’m capable of at that age, and so that might be something that stops me.

I have to say, I did not expect Kate Douglass to be so clear eyed about swimming, so honest about the tradeoffs involved. It’s refreshing to hear her say that once she retires from swimming, she’s going to move on to something else. She made the choice to get serious about swimming when she was in grade school, and the eight-year-old version of Kate Douglass had no idea what the 22-year-old person would want. She’s got her whole life ahead of her and a world of talent.   I can’t wait to see how things play out for her.

Next week be on the lookout for a brand new episode featuring M.I.T. labor economist David Autor. As always, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you back soon.

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People I (Mostly) Admire is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, No Stupid Questions, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Morgan Levey with help from Lyric Bowditch, and mixed by Jasmin Klinger.  Our theme music was composed by Luis Guerra. We can be reached at pima@freakonomics.com, that’s P-I-M-A@freakonomics.com. Thanks for listening.

LEVITT: What about water polo? Can you imagine a water polo career following your swimming career?

DOUGLASS: I think I could be interested in maybe taking up pickleball, or tennis. I think that could be a fun pastime for myself.