A Farewell to Lilly King, an American Swimming Icon
Lilly King spent the last two days of her professional swimming career doing what she’s done so well for the last decade.
On the penultimate day of the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, she took to social media to snipe back at Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, who a day earlier had held a mock Instagram-stories funeral for USA Swimming’s dominance.
On the last day of the meet, she swam to gold, as part of the prelims squad of the American women’s medley relay.
Those two traits – the fierce defense of herself and her teammates, and the ability to back her talk in the water – have defined King. The plethora of medals she’s collected makes her as a legend. The brashness with which she’s did it cements her status as an iconic part of American swimming history.
The numbers speak for themselves. King swims off into the sunset with six career Olympic medals over three editions. She’s a 14-time medalist in both versions of the World Championships, long- and short-course, with 19 total gold medals.
King has always been much more than that, a big personality in a sport that not only fails to foster them but can sometimes actively suppress them, especially on the women’s side.
“I just kind of do me,” King said in Singapore, after finishing fifth in her final individual swim. “I hope I leave the sport better than I found it. I was kind of a voice for the young girls that are maybe a little overconfident or cocky or said the wrong thing every once in a while or just aren’t afraid to be themselves, so that’s kind of what I’m hoping I leave the youth of the sport with. Just bring a little dose of Lilly to the swimming world.”
The doses were rarely little, and that was the point. King was always unapologetically King, especially when it came time to calling out violators of clean sport. The way she handled calling time on her career – it came at Olympic Trials in 2024, King delivering a very Lilly “nope” when asked if she aspires to a run at the 2028 Olympics – was quintessential.
Lilly King, Simone Manuel, and Claire Curzan in the medley relay prelims; Photo Courtesy: Emily Cameron
King’s candor would’ve made for good copy and little else if she also didn’t have the chops to back it up. But she did, time and again. The stretch she assembled from the Rio Olympics through the 2019 NCAA Championships remains one of the most dominant in female breaststroke history.
King won gold in the women’s 100 breaststroke at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, setting an Olympic record to best her Russian nemesis, Yuliya Yefimova (of which, more later). At the 2017 World Championships in Budapest, King set what would be her only two world records. The time of 29.48 seconds in the 50 breast held for four years. The 1:04.13 in the 100 has outlived her career, eight years old and counting in an era where few records post-super-suits have such staying power.
King capped this epoch of dominance with a marauding performance at the 2019 NCAA Championships. Her time in the 100 breast of 55.73 remains the NCAA, American and U.S. Open records. She also set a record in the 200 breast that survived until Kate Douglass. The Evansville native who has called Bloomington home for the last decade belongs in the annals of great Indiana swimmers, perhaps the greatest since the early 1970s male generation that produced Gary Hall Sr. and Mark Spitz.
King will go down in history as one of the best 100 breaststrokers. Only 26 performances have ever broken 1:05; King owns eight, more than anyone. (Second is Lithuanian Ruta Meilutyte, who took her 50 breast world record, with five.) King’s win at the Rio Olympics was just the third for an American woman at the Olympics, the event dating back to 1968 (Cathy Carr in 1972 and Megan Quann in 2000).
King didn’t always have it her way at major international meets, particularly the Olympics. She entered the delayed Tokyo Games as the favorite only to be nipped at the wall by fellow American Lydia Jacoby, a fast-riser in the race and in the world of swimming who wouldn’t have been anywhere near gold had the Tokyo Olympics occurred in 2020 as scheduled before the COVID-19 Olympics. King did well to hold bronze behind South African Tatjana Schoenmaker (now Tatjana Smith), then found her way to silver in the 200 breast, ostensibly her weaker event, behind Schoenmaker.
At the Paris Olympics, King finished eighth in the 200 breast and tied for fourth in the 100 with Italian Benedetta Pilato, her time of 1:05.60 just .01 off bronze and .06 off silver.
King’s achievements at World Championships were more consistent, a swimmer whose highest peaks just happened to align with odd-numbered summers rather than the Olympics’ even-numbered years. She did the 50/100 double at both the 2017 and 2019 World Championships, then added gold in the 200 in Budapest in 2022. The 2023 World Championships were somewhat off, but by minor margins – she got silver in the 50 but fourth in the 100 (Jacoby getting bronze) and fourth in the 200. But at age 26, even those performances remained far beyond most of her peers. (Smith retired at the end of the Paris Games, while Jacoby is on an indefinite break from the sport.)
King’s legacy is one of a devotion to clean sport. She became a household name in 2016 at age 19 not because she won gold but because she did so while verbally tussling with Yefimova, who had failed a drug test in 2013. This was years before the full revelation of systemic Russian doping, though King has consistently called out transgressors in all forms. The same was true when China’s 2021 evasion of doping sanctions for 23 positive tests was revealed. In a sport that prizes keeping your head down and staying in your lane, King’s finger wag at Yefimova was an earth-shattering bit of bravado.
King’s reputation, despite the forthrightness, wasn’t one of all-around prickliness. She has long been regarded as one of the best captains the United States has for international delegations. International swimmers with clean doping pasts have readily shared in her success, from training partner Annie Lazor and Schoenmaker on the Tokyo podium in 2021 to Meilutyte at the end of her career.
Lilly King; Photo Courtesy: Peter h. Bick
“Ruta and I, we’ve been through a lot together,” King said. “We’re a part of the very exclusive club and the mutual respect we have for each other is pretty amazing, so always love watching her kick some ass and respect the hell out of her and her journey, and just excited to see her continuing to do her thing.”
“This was the last final for Lilly,” Pilato said, “and it was very emotional for me because she was the first swimmer I shared a podium with, so I went straight to her and thanked her after the race.”
“She’s a very good athlete and a great senior figure in the sport,” China’s Tang Qianting said. “She’s achieved so much, even a world record. She’s someone who motivates me. I applauded for her after the race, and I hope she finishes her final competition happily.”
King has admitted that she’s said some things in the heat of the moment that haven’t been the most diplomatic. But she’s always stood in the consequences of those words. Her advocacy for anti-doping is proving more necessary than ever. While she may have been the object of more than a little schadenfreude from foreign journalists through the years as the embodiment of American hubris, she never ceded the moral high ground. Her work ethic far from the spotlight granted her the right to speak her mind in it, and it’s why she accrued so many fierce defenders in her camp.
“I just bring the same energy I bring to practice every day,” she said after her medley relay prelims swim. “I come in with a good attitude, and even when we’re in, for lack of a better term, a shitty situation. But I really try to come in and have a good attitude, make my day better, make other people’s day better, and really just try to elevate the competition around me.”
King got engaged at the 2024 Olympic Trials. After her wedding, she’ll have some deserved time away from the sport. And while it’s a little too rosy to posit King as the moral conscience of the U.S. program, her tenacity is a trait the American swimming establishment will have to replace, unless they can find a way to entice King to still be involved out of the water.
