SOURCE: USS SwimFactPact (unedited)

U.S. Swimming Trivia

• Mike Barrowman finished seventh in the 200-meter breaststroke at the 1985 U.S. Olympic Festival. He would have finished eighth but there was a disqualification. Kirk Stackle won the race.

• Tom Jager, world record-holder and two-time world champion in the 50-meter freestyle qualified for his first national meet in the 1,650y free.

• In 1964 there were only two 14-year-olds competing in the Olympic Trials--Mark Spitz, who went on to win seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics and Dennis Pursley, who went on to become the USS National Team Director.

• Americans Nancy Hogshead and Carrie Steinseifer registered the first official tie in Olympic history in the 100-meter freestyle at the 1984 Olympics. They each recorded a time of 55.92.

• Only track and field has more U.S. Olympic medals to its credit than men's or women's swimming.

• The U.S. has hosted the most Olympics since the first modern Olympiad in 1896. (1904 in St. Louis; 1932 & 1984 in Los Angeles; 1996 in Atlanta.)

• The Japanese won all the men's tides except the 400-meter freestyle in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. (Buster Crabbe won the 400-meter free)

• In the 1948 Olympics, the U.S. won every event in the swimming competition.

• Jill Sterkel is the only woman to make four U.S. Olympic swim teams--1976, 1980, 1984, 1988.

• Tracy Caulkins is the only swimmer ever, man or woman, to own American records in every stroke.

• In the 1984 Olympics, there were no women's World Records set.

• Leigh Ann Fetter was the first woman to break 22 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle with a 21.92 at the 1990 NCAA Championships.

• Of current world record holders, Mary T Meagher has held a world record the longest. She first set the record in the 200-meter butterfly in 1979 and has broken it an additional four times to the current standard of 2:05.96. She also owns the 10 of the 12 fastest times in history in the event.

• Since the first modern Olympiad in Athens in 1896, U.S. men have earned 207 medals, including 90 golds. Since women's swimming was added to the Olympic program in 1920, the U.S. representatives have won 140 medals, including 63 gold.

• At the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas, Venezuela, the U.S. men's 400 meter medley relay consisted of all four 100-meter stroke world record holders, the only time this has happened in swimming history. (Rick Carey, Steve Lundquist, Matt Gribble, Rowdy Gaines)

• In the 1904 Olympic Games, the first three places in the plunge-for-distance event went to members of the New York Athletic Club. The gold went to William Dickey with a plunge of 62’6”.

• Gold medalist hopeful Felix Farrell swam in the 1960 U.S. Olympic Time Trials only six days after an appendectomy. Not fully recovered, he placed fourth in the 100-meter free. This finish was good enough to put him on the 800-meter and 400-meter freestyle relays in which he recovered sufficiently to anchor the U.S. teams to World Records in both events.

• At the 1972 Olympic Games, Steve Genter suffered a collapsed lung only days before his event. Swimming without the consent of his doctors he went on to finish with a silver in the 200-meter freestyle and a bronze in the 400-meter freestyle.

• Buster Crabbe, gold and bronze medalist in the 1910 Olympics, went on after his swimming career to appear in 175 movies. He signed with Paramount for his first film "King of The Jungle" in hopes of becoming a rival to Johnny Weissmuller in the movie industry. Weissmuller was a swimming Olympian who starred in 12 Tarzan pictures.

• The first recorded swimming competition in the United States took place in 1883 with the New York Athletic Club, who held annual competitions through 1887 when the Amateur Athletic Union began sponsoring the events.

• The first woman to break the one-minute barrier in the 100y freestyle was Helene Madison of Seattle in 1932.

• Don Schollander was the first person to break two minutes in the 200m freestyle in 1963 with a 1:58.4.

• In 1924, Sybil Bauer became the first woman to break an existing men's record, when she won the 200m backstroke at the Olympic Games.

• J . Scott Leary of the Olympic Club in San Francisco, Calif., went 1:00.00 on July 18, 1905, to become the first man to swim one minute in the 100y freestyle.

Back to top