One of this year’s youngest Olympic swimmers now looks ahead to 2028
By RICHIE HALL
When an Olympian speaks, many people will listen. Especially the young ones.
Noblesville’s Luke Whitlock returned home from Paris this week after competing in the 2024 Olympic Games. The Fishers Area Swimming Tigers star qualified in the Men’s 800 freestyle; he finished 15th in the preliminaries with a time of 7 minutes, 49.26 seconds.
Whitlock is only 18, which made him one of the youngest swimmers at the Olympics. But to the young people who were among the roughly 100 that attended Whitlock’s homecoming event Wednesday at the Fishers High School cafeteria, he’s already someone they look up to.
Whitlock makes his walk out onto the pool deck to swim the Men’s 1500 freestyle event at the Paris Olympics. (Photo provided)
Whitlock and FAST head coach Joe Keller spoke for about 40 minutes at the event, after which Whitlock took questions from the crowd. After he finished speaking – as well as sign autographs and take pictures with his young fans – Whitlock said now that he’s taking a break from training and competing, he’s been able to process the past several weeks, which saw him go from hometown favorite at the Olympic Trials to competing in Paris.
“I still don’t even think that it sunk in that I was an Olympian by the time I competed in the Olympics,” said Whitlock. “After the trials, I got right back to work to prepare, so I was focused on that, not really thinking about how I had made it. But now, it’s definitely able to sink in and a little bit and it’s still kind of surreal to me.”
It was also surreal for Kara Whitlock, Luke’s mom, who spoke to the Reporter after the event.
“Going into trials, I really thought ‘Okay, maybe in 2028,’” said Kara Whitlock. But she said she was “pleasantly surprised that he made it this year.”
Luke Whitlock told the crowd there wasn’t “one specific moment” that led him to believe that he had a chance of becoming an Olympian.
“It’s just all the training together and just consistency, training hard and training well,” he said. “If you have just one good practice, it doesn’t mean much. Having a practice that’s better than you’ve ever done before just allows you to start training at a higher level all the time.
“That’s something I definitely noticed in April and May was, once I had one good practice, I would think to myself ‘I don’t know if I could do that again. I was really good.’ But then I’d surprise myself and I’d just have multiple good practices like that in a row. It really gave me confidence. It’s my first trials, but when I got there, I knew I’d put in the work and I wasn’t really nervous at all, and I knew that I could race anybody there.”
Luke Whitlock’s name is shown here on the scoreboard before his swim. (Photo provided)
Whitlock qualified for the Olympics by finishing the 800 free in second place.
“I was notified right after I swam the 1500 prelims,” said Whitlock. There weren’t many people around when he got the word, and he admitted he “wasn’t in a great mood” just after finishing his 1500 race.
“I was not very happy with how that swim went,” said Whitlock. But he said it “was fun to be officially named to the team then and notified then, so that brought my mood back.”
Whitlock joined the national team for its domestic training camp in Raleigh, N.C., where he was working out with Bobby Finke, who won gold medals in the 800 and 1500 freestyles at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and would go on to claim gold again in the 1500 free in Paris. He also trained with Katie Ledecky, the most decorated female swimmer of all time; Ledecky added two more gold medals to her total in Paris with wins in the 800 and 1500 freestyles.
“It was really fun being able to train with Bobby and Katie and under Coach (Anthony) Nesty and just seeing what I’ll be doing for the next four years,” said Whitlock.
Kara Whitlock enjoyed the fact that her son was now on a first-name basis with world champion swimmers.
“He was texting me, we didn’t have any phone calls while he was gone,” said Kara Whitlock. “He was texting with me, and he said ‘Katie,” and I was surprised. I immediately went to (marathon swimmer) Katie Grimes in my head because she was younger, and I know that he’s met her and talked to her before and stuff like that. Then when he said it was Katie Ledecky, that was funny.
“And I did get to meet her family in Paris. I’ve met her mom before, I met her at the U.S. Open in December, ended up sitting next to her and not knowing until she told me her daughter was Katie Ledecky.”
Luke Whitlock said there was nice camaraderie on Team USA, noting that “everybody there has respect for each other” and also the level of commitment the swimmers have to doing their best.
“Yeah, we’re going to have fun, but people are going to take care of business, too,” said Whitlock. “And I think that’s really nice, just being able to see that and watch other people and what they do and try to learn from that.”
“Part of it is believing that you can do something that’s at an extraordinarily high level,” said Keller. “I think that camp helped Luke see that he can swim with the best athletes in the world.”
Whitlock will swim collegiately at the University of Florida, which is where Finke swam from 2018 to 2022 and continues to train today. Keller said that should help Whitlock to continue his improvement and give him a solid chance to qualify for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
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