Meet Luke Whitlock
Luke Whitlock is an Olympic swimmer from Noblesville, Indiana, specializing in distance freestyle. Luke swam for the Fishers Area Swimming Tigers throughout high school and qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games at age 18, right after his senior year of high school. He was the youngest male swimmer to qualify for the Olympic Games since Michael Phelps in 2000. Despite all the success, Luke's journey has been far from linear.
In the days leading up to Luke's 800m Freestyle race in Paris, he started to feel sick. He failed to reach his ultimate goal for the Games, reaching the final, as he came down with COVID. After a short break, he jumped back into training for the next season. However, in October of 2024, Luke started experiencing shoulder pain. Over the next few months, swimming felt less natural and became increasingly challenging for him, both physically and mentally, as he dealt with the injury. In April 2025, he had to put swimming on pause and start focusing on rehabbing his shoulder. In doing this, Luke had to withdraw from the US National Championships in June and give up his goal for the year, to qualify for the 2025 World Championships in Singapore.
While 2024-2025 has been far from ideal for Luke, he looks forward to starting fresh at Indiana University in the fall of 2025 in the build-up to LA 2028. He will be training with some of the best distance athletes in the world while looking to make a strong comeback from his shoulder injury and a less-than-ideal year.
