Gretchen Walsh, Katie Ledecky Among Sullivan Award Semifinalists
Gretchen Walsh and Katie Ledecky are among six aquatics athletes up for voting as Sullivan Award semifinalists, announced Tuesday.
Voting for the award recognizing America’s top amateur athlete is open through Feb. 25 and available at the Amateur Athletic Union’s website. The award will be given on April 15.
Also among the 39 semifinalists are Paralympian Abbas Karimi and Olympians Bobby Finke and Phoebe Bacon. Water polo player Ryder Dodd is also among the finalists.
Ledecky became the most decorated female American Olympian in history and the most decorated female Olympic swimmer in history at the Paris Olympics. She won the 1,500 free and 800 free to go with relay silver and 400 free bronze. She has won nine Olympic gold medals and 14 total medals.
Walsh had an outstanding 2024, which included two relay gold medals, a relay silver and silver in the 100 fly at the Paris Olympics. She set the world record in the 100 fly at Olympic Trials. Walsh also won seven gold medals at the World Short-Course Championships, setting four individual and two relay world records.
At his second Olympics in Paris in 2024, Finke added gold in the men’s 1,500 free and silver in the 800 free. That takes his career total to four medals, three of them gold. The two-time Golden Goggles Male Athlete of the Year, he’s also a four-time medalist at the World Championships. Finke’s win in the 1,500 free, in which he set the world record of 14:30.67, was the only individual swimming gold medal by an American male in Paris.
Bacon qualified for her second Olympics in Paris, finishing fourth in the women’s 200 backstroke after having been fifth in Tokyo. She won a pair of relay medals at the 2024 World Short-Course Championships to go with silver in the long-course World Championships in 2022. Bacon is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin.
Karimi won a pair of silver medals in relays at the Paris Paralympics. He also won relay gold at the 2022 World Para Swimming Championship. A former member of the Refugee Paralympic team in Tokyo in 2021, the native of Afghanistan became an American citizen in 2022 and is based out of Florida.
Dodd was the youngest member of the U.S. men’s water polo team at the Paris Olympics, helping the team win bronze with eight goals. He also won an NCAA championship in 2024 with UCLA, named the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament and setting the MPSF record for goals in a season at 102. He was the leading scorer for the U.S. in winning the 2023 Pan American Games and was part of Team USA at the last two World Aquatics Championships.
The last aquatics athlete to win the Sullivan Award was Caeleb Dressel in 2020. Missy Franklin (2012) was the last female aquatic athlete to win it.
