Kathleen Baker: The Battles She Faced Before and After Winning Olympic Gold (“1on1 with Jon Evans” podcast)
WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – Kathleen Baker was just 19 years old when she stepped onto a podium in Rio de Janeiro on August 13, 2016. She was the youngest of the four swimmers on the United States’ 4x100m medley relay team, which had just won the final at the Summer Olympic Games. Baker was about to add a gold medal to the silver she’d won in the 100m backstroke final just five days earlier.
“When I look at the gold (medal), it immediately takes me back to standing on the podium and seeing our (American) flag being raised, and being able to sing our national anthem,” Baker said eight years later. “That moment is just so burned into my memory. You talk about a core memory, that’s a core memory that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
Reaching that pinnacle of success was not easy for the native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After falling in love with swimming around the age of seven, when mom Kimberely took her to a summer program, Baker began to excel at the sport. Without an Olympic-sized pool in her hometown, Kathleen begged her parents to drive her to Charlotte to begin training. Noticing their daughter’s drive and desire to become the best, combined with a natural ability, they made it happen. Baker still holds several state records in the 11-12-year-old age group, which she set in 2009 & 2010.
“I think every kid in summer swimming thinks, ‘I want to be Michael Phelps, I want to win the eight golds!’,” Baker remembers. “So, I feel like at that age, I was like just a part of that group. But by the time I was 10-12 years old, I really feel like I conceptualized what it took to get to the highest level already at such a young age.”
Around the time she began those daily trips to Charlotte for training, Baker came face-to-face with a major challenge. After suffering symptoms as a 12-year-old, doctors diagnosed Baker with Crohn’s Disease right around the time she turned 13.
“When I was diagnosed, I literally felt like my entire world was over,” Baker said. “I look back on that self, I’m thirteen years old and for me, I wanted to be an Olympic swimmer then. I was like, ‘I’m going to do it, I’m going to give everything to this sport!’, and I felt like, ‘Why me? Why would I get this? Why wouldn’t this happen to someone who didn’t care as much about their sport?’ I was willing to sacrifice anything for it, like sleepovers, going to football games, moving, whatever it was.”
Baker battled the effects of the disease while also trying to maintain her training schedule. It wasn’t until her doctors found a treatment that worked for her system that she could get back on track toward reaching her goal of making the Olympics. She won four medals (two silver, two bronze) at the 2013 World Championships, and in 2014, Baker committed to attend the University of California.
After her freshman year with the Golden Bears, Baker qualified for the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska. She made it to the finals of the 100m backstroke event and earned her spot on the team with a then-personal record time of 59.29, finishing about a quarter of a second behind the winner, Olivia Smoliga. She was headed to Rio, where she had a breakout performance.
“A lot of people don’t perform their best at the Olympics, because it’s the most amount of pressure there is in the entire sport,” Baker said. “But for me, I went from seeded 12th in the 100 backstroke to winning a silver, so I moved up quite a bit. My only goal was to get on our medley relay, and if you’re on that medley relay, you’re probably winning a gold medal. So, I wanted to get on that medley relay and show that I was capable of swimming in the final and standing on the podium with the team. I actually really didn’t think that winning a medal at this Olympics, in my individual race in the 100 backstroke, was really going to be the time. But quickly in the prelims, I had a breakout swim, and I was seeded first. My coach and I quickly had to sit down and say, ‘You can do this, you got it!’ I just remember being so grateful for that journey.”
The victories continued for Baker in 2017. She won three NCAA National Titles (100m & 200m backstroke, 200m medley), and followed that with three medals at the FINA World Championships in Hungary. In 2018, while competing at the U.S. Swimming Championships, she broke the world record for the 100m backstroke, lowering the mark to 58 seconds flat. The 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo were in her sights, but the games did not happen that year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When I reflect back on my swim career, when I look at my training and how I was doing, the best I ever was swimming was in 2020, when the Olympics got postponed,” she said. “That was so devastating. You train for four years for something and then have to wait another year. I was number one in the world in all three of my events. I was doing things in practice that I was shocked with, and my coach was shocked with. I was like, ‘I cannot believe I’m swimming the best I ever have leading into the Olympics, which is very hard to do’.”
Heartbreak happened in 2021 when, about a month before the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials, Baker broke her foot in two places and tore three tendons just running into the ocean. The injury hampered her training leading up to the event in Omaha, and Baker was only able to qualify for one final, finishing fifth in the 200m backstroke.
“For me, that was so devastating, I was in full-panic-attack in my wetsuit on the beach with my boyfriend at the time, now husband,” Baker said. “That was one of the worst moments of my entire life, for both of us actually.”
Baker swam competitively for another year after the injury, which allowed her to reflect on the joys she received from the sport, over and above competing for medals.
“I never swam just for accolades, I swam for how much I enjoyed it,” she says about her career. “When I reflect on that time, I think that it’s selfish to swim only to win an Olympic medal, and I’ve accomplished everything in the sport of swimming. At the same time, being able to have enough clarity to know I have a great relationship with my family, my now husband was there for me. I knew I didn’t want to go out on that note, so I swam all the way to 2022 when I moved here to Wilmington. I was just able to enjoy the sport and do the things I love.”
Along with launching her content website, lifewithKathleen.com, Baker is now a spokesperson for the Wilmington Aquatic Center and the proposed Olsen Farm Recreation Village in New Hanover County. The Development Team behind the project envisions a facility open to the public year-round, with Olympic-size pools and therapy pools, an inclusive recreation center and other amenities.
“I think Wilmington just lacks the pool space,” she said. “Everyone here living on the coast needs to know how to swim. I think that’s huge. I think that’s always going to be an issue and I hope that this (the project) becomes something that can really help.”
Kathleen Baker told me that when she received the diagnosis of Crohn’s, she googled how many Olympic or elite athletes had the disease. She found two. When she went public about the diagnosis, Baker says she began hearing from athletes and parents who thanked her for opening up about her struggles, letting them know they could also achieve success with hard work and determination. She’s become an advocate and role model for many young athletes, who dream like a young Kathleen did while splashing around the public pool in Winston-Salem. I hope you enjoy this conversation with her as much as I did.
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