It’s not unusual for men and women swimmers to train together, but being in the pool with Ledecky is something that many men can’t handle. In April, Conor Dwyer, a 6-foot-5, 27-year-old American swimmer who won a gold medal in the 4-by-200 freestyle relay in London, gave a revealing interview posted online by USA Swimming. In it, he talked about male swimmers being “broken” by Ledecky when they practiced together at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

“She is no easy task to beat in practice, even as a male,” he said. “I didn’t get broken by her, so I’m happy with that.” He added: “I saw her break a lot of guys in practice. ... What I mean is if we’re doing a 3K threshold” — 30 all-out 100 frees — “she’ll just start beating you every single hundred, and slowly but surely you get broken like you do in a long race, like a mile. Your morale goes down pretty quickly when you get broken by a female in practice. I saw a couple of guys have to get yanked out of workout because they got beat by her.”

When I asked Ledecky about this, she claimed not to have noticed. “I was probably just concentrating on doing my own work,” she said.