Lilly King

Early life

King was raised in Evansville, Indiana, the daughter of Mark and Ginny King. Mark ran track and cross-country at Indiana State University and Ginny swam for Eastern Kentucky University and Illinois State University. King's younger brother Alex is a walk-on swimmer at the University of Michigan. King attended FJ Reitz High School, where the school's swim team shared Lloyd Pool with five other teams. The lanes at Lloyd Pool were often crowded with swimmers below King's ability, so in order to help compensate, King added several morning practices a week with the local masters team and joined a competitive swim team called the Newburgh Sea Creatures.

College

King attends Indiana University Bloomington, where she competes for the Indiana Hoosiers swimming and diving team.

At the 2016 NCAA finals, her freshman year, she was crowned the NCAA Champion in the 100 yard breaststroke (56.85) and 200 yard breaststroke (2:03.59). The performance established King as one of the best short course yards breaststroke swimmers in history, setting the American, NCAA, NCAA Meet, U.S. Open, Indiana school, Big Ten, and Georgia Tech Pool records in winning the NCAA titles. That same freshman year she was named the Big Ten Swimmer of the Year, earned four All-America honors, First-Team All-Big Ten, and Big Ten Freshman of the Year.

2016 Summer Olympic Games

At the 2016 US Olympic trials in Omaha, King won both the 100 meter breaststroke and the 200 meter breaststroke, qualifying for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

In the 100 m breaststroke heats, King finished 1st with a time of 1:05.78 and qualified for the semifinals. There she again finished first with a time of 1:05.70. The next fastest swimmer was Yuliya Yefimova, a Russian and the reigning world champion who had previously served a 16-month doping suspension for failing a 2013 drug test. Yefimova also failed a drug test in 2016 with a drug that had been banned earlier that year (January 2016), but with no research on how long the drug stayed in a person's system, she was not banned or given a suspension. As King looked on from the ready room, where swimmers gather before they race, Yefimova won her semifinal and appeared to mock King by wagging her index finger — King had first performed the move earlier in the day. After posting the fastest time in the 100 m breaststroke semifinals, King expressed distaste for her rival Yefimova and wagged her finger to remind everyone who was No. 1. In a post-race interview with NBC, King said, "You wave your finger No. 1 and you’ve been caught drug cheating? I’m not a fan." King went on to win the Olympic gold medal in the 100 meter breaststroke, setting an Olympic record of 1:04.93 in the process.

In the 200 m breaststroke heats, King finished 15th with a time of 2:25.89 and qualified for the semifinals. She finished 7th in her semifinal with a time of 2:24.59. She did not qualify for final.

USA Today said King and Yefimova's rivalry "was heightened by the backstory, the international rivalry, and the high stakes of a final event. It was the Olympics at its very, very best." Sporting News noted the two "joined the list of the hottest U.S.-Soviet/Russian head-to-heads in sports history." As a result of her approach to the 2016 Olympic Games and her rivalry with Efimova, King developed a reputation as being "[f]riendly but fiery, with no filter and no apologies." Other journalists criticized her treatment of Yefimova.