International Swimming Hall of Fame Honorees By Country (Australia)

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.

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.

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.

Growing up in Perth, Western Australia this young lady had a clear and precise goal: She wanted to be an Olympian. The only problem was, she didn’t have a sport. Her first choice was gymnastics but she knew she was going to be too tall. The Bicton pool was just two minutes from her home and her older sister, Danielle, played water polo, so the choice became clear. Even though women’s water polo was not yet on the Olympic program, there were hopes it would be added to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. So she began a career that set the standard for female water polo players around the world.

She first learned to swim in her backyard pool in Katherine, Northern Territories. As a ten-year old Brisbane school girl, she watched Samantha Riley win the bronze medal in the 100m breaststroke at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Less than four years later, she ousted her idol from the Australian Team by winning the 100m breaststroke at the 2000 Australian Olympic trials at the age of 14. Shortly after her fifteenth birthday, she swam the race of her life to claim the silver medal in the 100m breaststroke and added another silver in the 4x100m medley relay at the Sydney Olympic Games.

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 swimmer joins a list of Australians who have won more Olympic gold medals in the fifteen-hundred meter freestyle than any other nation - starting with Andrew “Boy” Charlton in 1924. Following Charlton were Murray Rose-1956, Jon Konrads-1960, Robert Windle-1964 and Kieran Perkins in 1992 and 1996.

Growing up on the beautiful beaches of Queensland, Australia, Jodie Henry spent a lot of time at the beach with her two sisters, thanks to her parents love for the water. She learned to swim at the early age of three at the local Brisbane Swim School, but didn’t start competing until she was a teenager, which is quite late for a future Olympic Champion in this era.

Peter Montgomery was raised on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, where he played water polo and swam competitively in addition to being a surf lifesaver and junior rugby league player.

Tom Hoad was a Western Australia State Butterfly Champion from 1950 to 1954, but his love for the water was in water polo. For over 60 years, he helped keep Australia in the forefront of world water polo, first as a player, then as a coach.

Australia has produced one of the greatest female water polo players to ever play the game. If not for injuries incurred while playing her beloved netball, the world may have never known what a talent Debbie Watson was in the pool.

Born in Perth, Australia, in 1961, Shelley Taylor-Smith was so passionate about swimming that she would sneak off to bed each night in her bathers. Not overly talented and diagnosed with crippling scoliosis, her determination overruled what her doctors predicted and her swimming took off to heights which no one but herself anticipated.