International Swimming Hall of Fame Honorees By Category

From the beginning, Jason Lezak showed great promise in the pool, but he constantly butted heads with his coach, Dave Salo, over his commitment to training. Recruited to swim at UC Santa Barbara, Jason’s problems with authority continued until coach Gregg Wilson finally dismissed him from the team. This was the wake-up call he needed. He loved to swim and compete, and after promising to improve his training habits, he rejoined the team. In his Senior year, he was named Big West Conference Swimmer of the Year,

She was winning youth championships in Germany at age 14 and was quickly becoming one of the top junior swimmers in all of Europe. At the 1999 European Junior Championships when she was just 15, Britta Steffen won six gold medals.

Rice first showed promise of being a great swimmer at 16, when she qualified for the 2005 Junior Pan-Pacific Championships. It was there that Stephanie Rice won two gold medals for Team Australia.

She was born in Ruda Slaska, Poland in December 1983 and began swimming at six-years-old because doctors thought it would help the slight curvature in her spine. She originally had no interest in the sport, but her father had the last word.

When Amanda Beard started serious training as an 11-year old, no one could have imagined that this California girl, whose role model was the flamboyant bad boy of basketball, Dennis Rodman, would become America’s best female breaststroker at the tender age of 13. Training under coach Dave Salo at Novaquatics Swim Club, her progress was so meteoric that she skipped Junior Nationals, jumping directly from competing against 12-year olds to the Senior Nationals.

The youngest of three girls, Rebecca Adlington naturally wanted to do what her older sisters did, and the sisters were all swimmers. Before long, her desire to keep up with them made her into a serious competitor.

Libby Lenton, joined her first swim team at age four. By age ten, she was one of Queensland’s top age groupers. In 1995, the family moved to Brisbane, where Libby started training under coach John Carew, mentor of Hall of Famer, Kieren Perkins. But in early 2002, Libby began training under coach Stephan Widmar.

The name of Mark Spitz with his unprecedented seven gold medals and seven world records at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games stands out above all other achievements in Jewish sports history, but the title for the first great Jewish butterfly swimmer, belongs to another and this is his story. This is the story of French Algerian, Alfred Nakache.

He was a baker, rodeo competitor and strongman who entered his first competitive swimming race in 1963, to show that a 50 year old man could be as active as young fellows. It was a 60-mile professional marathon swim in frigid Lake Michigan. While Walter Poenish failed to finish, he was hooked on the sport and left the water determined to swim an even greater distance for an even greater cause.

In the early morning hours of the 8th of November, 1942, an armada of American destroyers, aircraft carriers and troop ships carrying 35,000 American soldiers approached the Moroccan coast under cover of darkness. Their mission was to destroy the French fleet guarding the port of Casablanca and occupy the city. The defending French warships were outgunned by the American fleet and as the battle ensued, several French vessels retreated into the harbor while under attack, hoping to avoid being sunk at sea.

In 1958, when she was 14 years old, she knew nothing about diving and didn’t even know how to swim, but coaches saw something in Zhang Xiuwei that led them to select her for a beginning diving program in the city of Tianjin, China. Xiuwei progressed rapidly and a year later, training under coach Wu Chengxi, she was selected for the national training program in Beijing, with athletes from all over China. The program was overseen by Soviet diving experts and in 1960, Xiuwei won the national youth springboard championship at the age of 16.

He learned to swim in the irrigation ditches of Maui’s Pu’unene’s sugar plantation, where his parents worked as laborers. Watching over him and the other kids was Soichi Sakamoto, one of their elementary school teachers.

The son of second-generation Chinese immigrants, from Fujian Province in southern China, Wu Chuanyu was born in Central Java, the Dutch East Indies, in 1928. Swimming came naturally to him and his friends, as the weather was hot, and there were wide rivers and a large pool near his home. Like many young boys his age around the world, he was inspired to become a champion swimmer by watching Tarzan movies, starring the American swimming sensation, Johnny Weissmuller.

Following in the wake of Russia’s Simeon Boychenko was Leonid Meshkov. Born in Volgograd in 1916, he showed promise as a swimmer. In 1936 his family moved to Leningrad so he could train at the “Dolphin Sports Club.” In 1940, Meshkov, like Boychenko, broke the recognized world record in the 100-meter butterfly-breaststroke, and European records in the 200 and 400-meter freestyle. Also like Boychenko, his times were not recognized.

He was born in Moscow in 1941, during WWII, and grew up in Moscow at the height of the cold war. It was when sports in the Soviet Union were under the supervision of the ministry of defense and Boris Popov began his playing water polo at the TsSK Navy Children’s School. From 1960 through 1973 he played for the Moscow State University team and in 1964, was a member of the Soviet team that won the bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics and gold at the 1966 European Championships.

Bill Sweetenham grew up in poverty in the rural part of Australia, in a place called Mount Isa, a mining town out in the middle of nowhere. He found refuge from this tough environment and from his father’s strict discipline through participation in sports, especially swimming.

Dick’s journey to the Swimming Hall of Fame began when his mother insisted he learn to swim. His first swim teacher and coach was Laurabelle Bookstaver, of the Berkeley Women’s City Club. Under the tutelage of this tough talking woman, Dick fell in love with the sport. He earned a scholarship to the University of Washington where John Tallman turned him into an All-American sprinter and took him on as his assistant. Leaving Washington to continue his studies at Cal, he joined Pete Cutino’s staff as his assistant. Over the years he had studied the methods of George Haines, Sherm Chavoor, Peter Daland and Jim Counsilman and after receiving his Ph. D., accepted the coaching and teaching position at UC Hayward. It was at Hayward where Dr. Robert Morford led him to discover the ancient Greek concept of Agon and Areté - the struggle and the victory.

He grew up in San Francisco where he was taught to swim by his father at China Beach, in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. At Sequoia High School, in Redwood City, he developed into a champion swimmer and water polo player under coach Clyde Devine, who predicted Jim Gaughran would one day be an Olympian.

Don Watson’s swimming life began in the mid-1940s when, having just turned 13, he joined the St. Louis YMCA swim team. Now, as it turned out, the St. Louis Y had among its members, an outstanding swimmer who would have a profound influence not only on Don’s life, but on the sport of swimming. That swimmer was Jim Counsilman, better known to us today as “Doc.”

Masako Kaneko was born in Tokyo, Japan on April 17, 1944 and has contributed as both a swimmer and coach since the beginning of synchronized swimming in Japan.

She began her love of swimming at age three. At 11, her older sisters taught her “water ballet” and she was immediately hooked. She loved the music, the creativity, the artistry and best of all, swimming upside down! She then discovered the Washington Athletic Club Synchronized Swimming Team, where she competed through high school. After high school, she moved and competed with the reigning National Champion, Santa Clara Aquamaids. It was with the Aquamaids, she became a National Team champion in 1970.

Hungary is a land of thermal springs and although landlocked, swimming and water sports are ingrained in its culture. This love of water led to an early domination of international swimming and diving competitions in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the 1920’s, it was water polo that came to symbolize Hungary’s unique strengths and individuality. So, it was natural for a boy born in 1930 to want to play water polo.

For over 50 years, the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF) has recognized a category of honorees known as “contributors.” They are the unsung heroes who have used their talents and work behind the scenes to positively impact the aquatic sports and help create platforms for others to achieve fame and glory.

Joy Cushman was born into an aquatic family that had a summer beach house in Galveston, Texas. It was there she developed an early love for swimming, fishing, surfing, and waterskiing. Back in Houston during the school year, she joined a swimming team. Like most female swimmers in those days, she performed water ballet routines for her club’s annual water shows, starting in 1939. It was the great heyday of water shows and the Aquacades that helped popularize swimming and make Hall of Famers Johnny Weissmuller, Eleanor Holm, Buster Crabbe and Esther Williams superstars.

Heinz Kluetmeier was born and raised in Germany until he was nine, when his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was introduced to the idea of a career in photo journalism when several photos taken of him by his mother, with his multi-talented pet parakeet “Chirpy,” were picked up and published nationally by the Associated Press. By age 15, he was shooting pictures for the local AP office.

As a swimmer, he was the Scottish freestyle champion and record holder over several distances between 1942 and 1947 before deciding to concentrate on diving. Self-taught and self-coached, he won gold medals at the 1950, 1954 and 1958 Commonwealth Games on the 10-meter platform and represented Great Britain at the Olympic Games in 1948 in London and in 1952 in Helsinki.

He was born in Roma, Italy and as a youth he loved sports, especially basketball, swimming and water polo. Aquatics won out over basketball, and Bartolo Consolo has spent the last 40+ years dedicating his life and his free time to FINA and all its aquatic disciplines.

A great promoter of youth sports and art, Bruce Hopping was born in 1921 in Vietnam. He grew up in Asia and the islands of the South Pacific, where his parents had business interests. When he was ready for high school, his family relocated to the United States, and then, like the rest of his graduating class in high school, he volunteered for the Army at the outbreak of World War II. He became a pilot and while searching for a missing plane, he was forced to ditch his plane into the Pacific. Battling storms, waves, sharks, sunburn and salt sores in a leaky raft, he survived on seagulls that roosted there and washed ashore in the Philippines two weeks later. It was a prime example of Hopping’s perseverance, tenacity and desire to live.

Li Ting was born April 1, 1987 in the Lingui District in China. She and her twin sister were the youngest of three daughters.

Inspired by the publicity surrounding Romanian gymnastic guru Béla Károlyi’s arrival to her home town of Houston, Texas, in 1981, Laura Wilkinson fell in love with gymnastics and dreamed of being in the 1996 Olympic Games. After years of training her gymnastic career ended when a growth spurt made her too tall for the sport. Then she discovered diving. In spite of being told by one of her teachers that she was too old to start a new sport at the age of 15, Laura plunged in and “fell in love with the sport on the first day.”

When he first appeared at the Voronezh Children’s Sports School at the age of seven, no one could have imagined that this youngster would one day reign as the Czar of Diving. Although physically strong and fearless, he was very inflexible and didn’t know how to swim. Yet Tatiana Starodubtseva, the school’s diving coach saw in him the courage, perseverance and determination that would make him one of the greatest divers in the history of the sport.

Before 1973, there were no World Championships, World Diving Cups or Grand Prix Diving series. For divers there was only one chance to test their skills in the international arena every four years and that was at the Olympic Games.

She enjoyed a very normal childhood growing up in the city of Baoding in the province of Hebei, until 1988, when a diving scout visited her school. The scout asked the students if anyone wanted to learn how to dive and Guo Jingjing eagerly volunteered, believing she was signing up for swimming.

The success of the Chinese in the sport of diving in the Olympic Games since 1984 has been staggering, and many have asked why this is. Invariably, the answer is because of Boxi Liang, considered by many to be the Father of Chinese Diving.

Lao Lishi actually got into the sport of diving by mistake. She would go to her brother’s practices with her mother and became restless, so while looking for something to do, she found a trampoline. The amateur sports school’s coach, Zhong Quansheng noticed the little girl’s coordination and boldness. So, in 1995, Lao Lishi the pre-schooler became a member of the Chikan Diving School of Amateur Sports Schools.

When she was just 12-years-old, she knew open water swimming was her passion, and she told her younger sister that she would swim the English Channel one day.

Petar Stoychev is unique among all the world’s open water swimmers. Stoychev’s versatility in open water swimming is unprecedented. A superman in the water, he has been able to cross great channels and swim in extreme conditions with water temperatures ranging from 35 to 90 degrees. He was the first swimmer to cross the English Channel in under seven hours.

When Matthew Webb’s feet touched the sandy beach at Cape Gris Nez, France on the morning of August 25th, 1875, after an ordeal of almost almost 22 hours, he became the first man to swim unaided across the English Channel and became a world-wide celebrity as “King of the Channel.”

This eight-time World Champion was unbeatable in major international competition beginning with her 2004 debut in Dubai as a 16-year-old, to her dramatic victory at the inaugural Olympic open water race at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

The one thing successful open water swimmers all seem to have in common is their appreciation for their crew and team. It’s usually all they can talk about after a swim, and Irene van der Laan is no different.

As his father Ted was getting interested in open water swimming, he took his son to swimming lessons with Chicago Park District’s Ridge Park program. The boy’s rapid progression led him to follow in his father’s wake as a great marathon swimmer.

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man’s determination.Open Water Swimmer David Yudovin is known for his determination to conquer waters that have previously been considered unswimmable, and becoming the first person to swim them. But by all rights, he shouldn’t be alive right now. He should have died off the California coast on his 27th birthday in 1978, when he was attempting to be the first person to swim from California’s Anacapa Island to Ventura and went into cardiac arrest just 250 yards from shore.

Miho Takeda was born and raised in the Kyoto Prefecture on Honshu, Japan’s largest and most populous island. She began swimming at the age of five and turned to synchronized swimming two years later. She changed clubs at the age of thirteen to train under Masayo Imura, the national team coach and “Mother of Japanese Synchro.”

Her first sport was figure skating. Then she saw rhythmic gymnastics on TV and she left the ice for the ribbon and mat, but not for long. At the age of six, her mother took her for swim lessons where she was exposed to synchronized swimming. She immediately loved the sport. Early on in her career, she was tested by her coach to see if she was really serious about synchronized swimming. She was asked to give up her favorite foods of chocolate, cakes and chips. She loved the sport more, gave the foods up and the rest, as they say, is history.

She tried gymnastics, dancing and swimming before she joined the synchronized swim-ming team at the age of five. It was at the Seagull Sports School where she learned to love the water and sports, and it became her second home.

She is one of the most decorated synchronized swimmers in history with a combined 19 gold and two silver medals at the Olympic Games, World Championships, World Cups and World Trophies.

A pair of overweight, uncoordinated twins is the way they describe themselves in elementary school. But when they were eight years old they discovered synchronized swimming; they had a natural talent for it and they loved it. It was the perfect sport for identical twins, swimming like mirrored images.

A pair of overweight, uncoordinated twins is the way they describe themselves in elementary school. But when they were eight years old they discovered synchronized swimming; they had a natural talent for it and they loved it. It was the perfect sport for identical twins, swimming like mirrored images.

Ever since Jill learned to swim at the age of four, she loved synchronized swimming and competed in the sport for 20 years. Upon reaching the National Team, she practiced five to seven hours a day, six days per week and became one of the world’s all-time best synchronized swimmers.