Ledecky headlines Olympic stars honored at the ESPY Awards

The 2022 ESPY Awards had an Olympic flavor this year as the sporting world lauded its best and most inspiring sports athletes of the year.

Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles welcomed the sports world in a night long program hosted by Stephen Curry, the newly crowned NBA champion of the Golden State Warriors.

Seven-time swimming Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky was named best female athlete. Fresh off another World Championship where she won four more gold medals and became the first swimmer to ever win five consecutive world championships in an individual event.

During the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Ledecky won two gold medals and two silver medals to add to her already impressive Olympic total.

Ledecky gave an inspirational speech, and spoke directly to parents to teach their children how to swim, something she called a “really important life skill.”

Ledecky also spoke to the world’s young people to “find something you really love, that you’re good at, that can be a positive force in our world.”

“Something that can inspire somebody else, something that can help somebody else, anything that can change our world,” she said. “There are so many heroes, not just in sports, but all around us... look to those people as role models, and go for the gold.”

Olympic champions Eileen Gu, Caeleb Dressel and Klay Thompson were also honored at the ESPY awards.

Freestyle skier Gu, won the breakthrough athlete of 2022 category after taking double gold in big air and half-pipe, and silver in slopestyle at Beijing 2022. While U.S. swimmer Caeleb Dressel won Best Olympian, Men’s Sports.

At the 2022 World Championships Dressel led-off the 4x100 meter freestyle in a time of 47.67 seconds, helping the U.S. relay team win the gold. He added to his medal total in the 50m butterfly taking home gold with a time of 22.57 seconds.

Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson, who was part of the American team that defended their Olympic title at the Rio 2016 Olympics earned the comeback award.

Thompson sat out the entire 2020-21 season after tearing his Achilles tendon in 2019. He returned in January this year and was pivotal in the Warriors rotation, as the Warriors went to the NBA Finals where they beat the Boston Celtics in six games to win their fourth title in eight years.

Former boxer and now mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko of Ukraine received the award for courage.

Los Angeles Angels and Japanese national pitcher Shohei Ohtani won the award as best athlete in the men’s sports category as best Major League Baseball player.