International Swimming Hall of Fame Honorees By Last Name (C)

Re Calcaterra was born in 1915 in St. Louis, an area where she lived all her life. In this landlocked state of Missouri, swimming was not on the minds of most people especially after the dirty- water swimming conditions where many athletes became ill at the 1904 St Louis Olympic Games only eleven years earlier. After high school graduation, she went to work as a secretary atthe Brown Shoe Company in St. Louis. Soon married, she took her daughter, Roz, to the YMCA, teaching her to swim at a young age. A few years later, she attended a synchronised swimming clinic and in 1948, at the St. Louis Downtown YMCA, she organized the Clayton Shaw Park Synchronized Swimming Team, which she coached for more than 50 years; producing two national champions, one being daughter Roz, syn­chro's first nomination for the Sullivan Award.

He was born in Palermo, on the beautiful island of Sicily, but he grew up in Syracuse, where he began learning to swim at the age of six. Sandro, as he is affectionately known, was afraid at first, but the more time he spent in the water, the more confident he became, and he soon came to love it. At the same time, he also loved football and trained seriously in both sports.

Considered a coaching genius, Alberto Castagnetti was a “wizard of swimming” who made the Italian colors shine on the world stage. But he did not do magic. The reality was that he obtained magnificent results through hard work and unsurpassed professionalism. These were the talents that allowed him to write his name on the greatest chapter of Italian swimming history.

Growing up in Tianjin, China Mu Chengkuan thrived in an era when China was adopting the western culture of physical fitness. He was a champion cyclist, a Kung-fu master and excelled as a swimmer. In 1941, he dared to challenge foreigners in a swimming match, which was the basis of a scene in the famous movie that was based on his life, “Enter the Water Dragon.” His victories over Western athletes boosted Chinese patriotism and Mu became a household name almost over night.

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.

In the late 1920s, the European continent was in a depression and while communist and fascist factions were fighting for power in Spain, Argentina became an oasis of prosperity and peace, and the preeminent center of Spanish culture and sport. Swimming was particularly popular after Alberto Zorilla won Olympic gold in 1928. This was the condition in Argentina when Osvaldo Horacio Codaro was born on December 9, 1930, in the Avellaneda district of Buenos Aires.

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.

When 17-year old Ian Crocker entered the 2000 US Olympic Trials, it was with a view to gain experience for 2004, but he left the meet winning the 100m butterfly. Then, at the Olympic Games in Sydney, he won a gold medal as a member of the USA’s world record breaking 4x100m medley relay team.

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.