2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/144946The distortion of a curve measures the maximum arc/chord length ratio. Gromov showed any closed curve has distortion at least pi/2 and asked about the distortion of knots. Here, we prove that any nontrivial tame knot has distortion at least 5pi/3; examples show that distortion under 7.16 suffices to build a trefoil knot. Our argument uses the existence of a shortest essential secant and a characterization of borderline-essential arcs.5 pages, 7 figures; substantial improvements: bound is now 5pi/3 and applies to all tame knotsGeometric TopologyDifferential Geometry57M25 (Primary); 49Q10, 53A04, 53C42 (Secondary)text