Westchester native Kate Douglass won gold for Team USA during a powerful Olympic performance Thursday in the 200-meter breaststroke, edging out 2021 Olympic champion Tatjana Smith.
Douglass, who graduated from Pelham Memorial High School in 2019 before joining the NCAA-winning team at the University of Virginia, earned her first Olympic gold medal by touching the wall at 2:19.24.
It was the American’s second medal of the 2024 Games, as she helped Team USA earn silver in the women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay on the first night of the Olympic meet.
To earn gold Thursday, the 22-year-old bested Smith, a South African swimmer who won the event in Tokyo and earned gold in the 100-meter breaststroke on Monday in Paris.
“I’m really excited,” Douglas told reporters. “For a while I wasn’t sure if Olympic champion was going to be possible for me to say, and now it’s just really exciting to see it happen.”
Smith announced that she was retiring after Thursday’s swim, ending her career as the most decorated Olympian in South Africa’s history after earning a total of four Olympic medals.
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The 27-year-old still holds the Olympic record of 2:18.95 in the 200-meter race achieved by her performance in Tokyo.
However, Douglass did break her own American record in the event Thursday, shaving off 0.06 seconds from her record-breaking swim set in January 2024.
This is Douglass’ second Olympics, as she won bronze in the 200-meter individual medley in 2021, but her first time competing in the 200-meter breaststroke at the Games.
Douglass has been a prominent figure in women’s swimming over the past four years, having helped the University of Virginia win four consecutive NCAA championships from 2021-24.
The swimmer, who ended her five-year tenure at Virginia this spring, has also won 15 NCAA titles in individual and relay events and 14 world championships medals.
While competing at meets outside of the NCAA, the New York native still belongs to her club team, New York Athletic Club, where she began training at the Chelsea Piers facility while still in high school.
Douglass had an incredible performance in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in June, coming in first and earning an Olympic spot in four individual events: 100-meter freestyle, 200-meter breaststroke, 200-meter individual medley and the 50-meter freestyle.
While Douglass opted to skip the 100-meter freestyle at the Games to prioritize the breaststroke event Thursday, she’s expected to be a top contender in the 200-meter individual medley and 50-meter freestyle events Saturday and Sunday respectively.
Douglass also swam in the final across the pool from Team USA breaststroke veteran Lilly King. While managing to earn a spot in the final, King came in eighth with a time of 2:25.91.
King announced prior to the meet that this will likely be her final Olympic Games, after competing both in Rio and Tokyo and earning two gold medals, two silver and one bronze from those competitions.
