Kate Douglass defends her 200m individual medley title at the 2024 World Aquatics Championship

The reigning World Champion, Kate Douglass defended her 200m individual relay title at the World Aquatics Championships held in Doha on February 12.

Kate Douglass put forward an impressive performance at the 2023 edition of the World Aquatics Championships. The American won six medals altogether at the event, with gold medals in the 200m individual medley and 4×100m medley.

She won the 200m individual medley with a time of 2:07.17. With such remarkable performances under her belt, Kate was named the Female Athlete of the Year at the Golden Goggle Awards in November 2023, along with star swimmer Katie Ledecky.

At the 2024 World Aquatics Championships, Kate breezed through all the rounds and into the finals. She swam in a personal best time of 2:07.05, clinching the gold medal once again.

The official X (formerly Twitter) handle of World Aquatics posted her incredible achievement.

"Kate DOUGLASS defends her title in the Women's 200m IM clocking a PB of 2:07.05 and takes home gold," tweeted World Aquatics.

Sydney Pickrem of Canada won the silver medal and Yiting Yu of China won the bronze medal, clocking 2:08.56 and 2:09.01, respectively.

Kate Douglass' career highlights

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Kate began her swimming career at the Westchester Aquatic Club. The American swimmer displayed huge potential as a high schooler. She first made headlines in her high school sophomore year when she broke former Olympian swimmer Dara Torres' high school record in the 50-yard freestyle.

She clocked 22.32 in the 50-yard freestyle in November 2016, in the process creating a new national record in the 13-14 age group. Exactly a month later, she clocked 22.04 and tied the national record for the 15-16 age group.

Douglass qualified for the 2016 US Olympic trials. However, she could not make it to the final Olympic team. Kate made her Olympic debut at the Tokyo Olympic Games. She clinched the bronze medal in her first Olympic 200m medley final with a time of 2:09.04.

After the Olympics, Kate went on to improve her performance immensely. In the process, she set multiple national records at the 2022 NCAA championships. Douglass won a total of seven medals out of which four were relays and three were individual events. Her stellar performance made her the first Division I collegiate swimmer to win three medals in individual events more precisely in different strokes.