Paris 2024: Statistics master’s student Kate Douglass uses school smarts to win Olympic swimming gold
Stick to the plan, stay calm, count strokes.
That was the race strategy USA swimmer and statistics major Kate Douglass had going into the women’s 200m breaststroke final on Thursday 1 August. While she did not get high marks from her university professors for the plan’s perfect execution, Douglass got something even better – a gold medal from the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
“To get an individual Olympic gold is such an amazing feeling and to already have two medals from this meet, that’s more than I ever could have imagined,” said Douglass, who also helped Team USA to silver in the 4x100m freestyle relay earlier in the week.
While Douglass is leaning on swimming coaches instead of university scholars at Paris 2024, she credits part of her Olympic success to her studies at the University of Virginia.
The two-time Olympian completed a bachelor’s degree in statistics in 2023 and is now pursuing a master’s degree in the same field. It was during these studies that Douglass realized studying statistics could also help improve her swimming.
“I got to UVA and I started to see it used more in swimming. I didn’t really realise that beforehand, but now it’s definitely a big part of swimming,” Douglass said.
“(Swimming is) definitely not why I started to be interested in statistics, but it’s cool to see the comparison between the two. I’ve definitely been able to use my love for statistics and use that to help me succeed in the water and relate statistics to swimming and I definitely think that has helped me at least shave a few tenths of a second off my times.”
From classroom to the Olympic pool: Kate Douglass applies statistics to sport
Douglass outlines how data analytics can help in the pool in an academic paper she co-authored with fellow students under the guidance of mathematics and data science professor Ken Ono.
“Swimming in Data” is packed with mathematical formulas, Newton’s Laws of Motion and... Olympic swimmers, from Johnny Weissmuller, who won three gold medals at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, to Caeleb Dressel, who bumped his gold medal count to eight in Paris a century later, with more races to go.
The Paris connection in the manuscript is not accidental. Douglass has used its findings to improve her own breaststroke times ahead of Paris 2024.
She and Rio 2016 champion Lilly King are used as case studies in the research. It compares their streamline positions and plots the efficiency of their strokes on a chart.
The athletes wore inertial measurement units - accelerometers placed around the waist - and sensor bands to calculate acceleration rates during each kick, splash and rotation. The swimming techniques could then be analyzed digitally to identify any technical flaws.
“There’s a lot that goes into it and different techniques and different devices that we can use to see certain acceleration at points in the stroke and figure out how to maximize that,” said Douglass.
“I’m definitely a numbers person. That’s something that I focus on and something I like to look at after my races.”
While modern technology has been a key feature in Douglass’ research as well as her personal quest to improve split times in the pool, the swimmer also makes use of some low-tech measurement methods. She counts her strokes.
“That’s just something that I do in practice every day, and then I started doing it in races kind of subconsciously,” Douglass said. “I just count my strokes every lap.
“When I started really focusing on the 200 breaststroke, I would realise that every time I swim the race, I did a specific stroke count. Or sometimes, if I went off that stroke count, then the race didn’t go as planned.”
Tokyo 2020 champion Tatjana Smith celebrates the new Paris 2024 champion Kate Douglass
The strokes and stats behind Douglass’ races at Paris 2024
The stroke counting was in full effect when Douglass swam the 200m breaststroke final at Paris La Defense Arena in front of enthusiastic spectators that included some 50 friends and members of her family.
This was the time to put the lessons she learned at university to the test in the Olympic pool, and the test was a hard one.
Douglass was swimming with reigning world champion Tes Schouten of the Netherlands and defending Olympic champion Tatjana Smith (previously Schoenmaker) in the lanes next to her. It was the last Olympic race for the South African veteran, and Smith was hoping to retire by turning her earlier 100m breaststroke victory into a rare breaststroke double, not accomplished since Atlanta 1996.
Smith was quick off the blocks and led for the first 50m, but Douglass got into the leader’s position in the next lap and never relinquished it until touching the wall in a time of 2:19.24. All while diligently counting her strokes.
“I feel like for the past few times, at least, that I've gone a 2.19, I've had a specific stroke count that I've stuck to and so I knew going into that race, if I stuck to that plan, I'd be able to go 2.19 again,” Douglass said.
Douglass’ winning time at Paris 2024 improved on her own American record of 2:19.30. Smith finished 0.36 seconds behind with 2:19.60 on the clock, while Schouten was third with 2:21.05.
“It’s amazing the times that we saw,” Smith said afterwards. “She pushed me to be a better version of myself and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
A beaming Smith was among the first to lean over the lane divider to give Douglass a hug as the USA athlete, hand clasped over her mouth, still grappled with the realization that she was now an Olympic champion. No scientific device would be needed to measure Douglass’ elation – it was spelled clear on her face.
“A few months ago, if you told me that I would win a gold medal at the Olympics, I wouldn’t believe you,” Douglass said. “It’s just a surreal moment.”