Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky Can Achieve Olympics History at Paris 2024

(L)Simone Biles of Team USA poses with the bronze medal during the Women's Balance Beam Final medal ceremony on day eleven of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Ariake Gymnastics Centre on August 03, 2021. (R)Katie Ledecky of Team USA poses with her two Gold and two Silver medals after a giving a press conference to the media during the Tokyo Olympic Games on July 31, 2021. (Laurence Griffiths, Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

The 2024 Summer Olympics officially start on Friday, July 26 from Paris, and two of the biggest stars of the Games don the Red, White and Blue of the United States.

Swimmer Katie Ledecky and gymnast Simone Biles were born just three days apart, with Biles the elder, and both have been fixtures at the Olympics for quite some time. While they’ve already accomplished so much and are considered, perhaps, the greatest in their sports,  a lot is still at stake for the two at Paris 2024.

Ledecky’s 2024 Olympics will start first, on July 27 with the 400m freestyle. It’s one of four events she’s expected to compete in, joining the 1500m freestyle, the 4x200m freestyle relay and the 800m freestyle. Ledecky is already the most decorated Olympian female swimmer, with six individual gold medals–one in 2012, three in 2016, and two in 2020. She also has another via relay, and if Ledecky claims just one more gold, she would tie American Jenny Thompson for the most Olympic gold meals by a woman swimmer. Thompson won all eight of hers via relay teams from 1992-2000.

Ledecky won all four of her events at the U.S. Swimming Olympic Trials. She made her Olympic debut as a 15-year-old in 2012 when she claimed the 800m freestyle, set the world record speed in that event in 2016, and has swept gold in each of the last three Olympic Games. Adding another gold to her count in the 800m freestyle would make Ledecky and Michael Phelps the only swimmers to win four Olympic gold medals in the same event.

Speaking of Phelps—while Ledecky won’t reach his 28 Olympic medals anytime soon—she needs to win three medals of any color to become the most decorated American Olympian female of any sport. She’s won 10 medals so far, trailing swimmers Thompson, Dara Torres and Natalie Coughlin (12 medals) and track star Allyson Felix (11 medals). Reaching 13 would have her only trailing Phelps for the most medals by an American ever, regardless of gender.

As for Biles, she was the star of the 2016 Games, tying the Olympic record for a gymnast by winning four golds in a single Olympics. But she then withdrew from much of the 2020 Olympics due to a bout of the twisties and mental health concerns as she only participated in two of six scheduled events. She is slated to begin Paris 2024 on July 27 and is again expected to take part in six events—team all-around, individual all-around, vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise.

Biles already has the most Olympic golds (four) of any American gymnast, and she is tied with Shannon Miller for the most medals of any color (seven) by a gymnast from the United States. At 27 years old, Biles is slated to become the oldest female American gymnast to compete at an Olympic Games since 1952, but the elder stateswoman of USA Gymnastics is looking to add more than age-related milestones to her career accomplishments.

One more gold would tie her with male gymnast Anton Heida for the most Olympic golds by any American gymnast, and the five gold medals would be tied for the third-most amongst any female gymnast, regardless of nationality. She would only trail Vera Caslavska (seven) of Czechoslovakia and Larisa Latynina (nine) of the Soviet Union, but again, Biles is slated to compete in six events. If she wins gold in five of those—and she came close in 2016 when she won four golds and one bronze—then Biles would emerge from Paris 2024 tied for having won the most Olympic gold medals, regardless of sport, of any female athlete, pending Ledecky’s results.

It would be a monumental tasks for both Biles and Ledecky to sweep all of their combined 10 events, but stranger things have happened on the mat, and in the pool. If they were able to do that, then at the end of the 2024 Summer Olympics, the leaderboard for the most gold medals of any athlete in any sport would read: No. 1 Michael Phelps (23), No. 2 Katie Ledecky (11) and No. 3 Simone Biles (10).

It may be somewhat fitting for those three to be linked together, as just after the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, they posed together for the cover of Sports Illustrated with the 16 combined medals they won at those Summer Olympics. That would be Phelps’ last time competing at the Olympic Games, and one could view the cover as a passing of the torch of the Team USA face of the Olympics from Phelps to Ledecky and Biles. Their notoriety and popularity have only grown since then, and Paris 2024 will determine if their medal counts continue to grow as well.