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

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.

Hungary is a land of thermal springs and although landlocked, swimming and water sports are ingrained in their 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 1920s, it was water polo that came to symbolize Hungary’s unique strengths and individuality. From 1928 to 1980, the Hungarian National Water Polo Team dominated the sport like no other nation, reaching the podium at twelve consecutive Olympic Games. During this streak the Hungarians won six gold medals, three silver medals, three bronze medals, and back to back titles twice: 1932 and 1936 and, 1952 and 1956. It came to be that anything less than the gold medal was considered a failure.

Born in Budapest 1954, Denes Kemeny began playing water polo at the young age of six. For the next 21 years, he played for six teams making the Hungarian National Team from 1974 to 1986 and competed in over 17 international games for his country.

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.

Hungary is a land of thermal springs and although landlocked, swimming and water sports are ingrained in their 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 1920s, it was water polo that came to symbolize Hungary’s unique strengths and individuality. From 1928 to 1980, the Hungarian National Water Polo Team dominated the sport like no other nation, reaching the podium at twelve consecutive Olympic Games. During this streak the Hungarians won six gold medals, three silver medals, three bronze medals, and back to back titles twice: 1932 and 1936 and, 1952 and 1956. It came to be that anything less than the gold medal was considered a failure.

Every so often, a coach will come along who has the ability to lift his swimmers to new heights, as Laszlo Kiss did establishing Olympic champions.

She was born into an athletic minded family in 1982, in Simferopol, Ukraine, when it was the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within the old Soviet Union. Because of the Soviet Union’s emphasis on physical education, the Ukraine was left with hundreds of stadiums and swimming pools. This little girl picked the swimming pool to excel. She first started in gymnastics, but once she started swimming at age seven, she never looked back.

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.

What Hall of Fame Olympic Champions Tracy Ruiz, Carolyn Waldo, Candy Costie, Michele Cameron, the Josephson twins, Sylvie Frechette and Kristen Babb were to the United States and Canada, the beautiful Mikako Kotani was to Japan.

Born in Budapest, Agnes Kovacs learned to swim when she was just two and a half years old, and loved the water from the very start. When she was just nine years old, her swimming teacher, Bea Szucs recommended she join the program at the Kőér St. Pool where she made rapid progress. At the age of 13 she had her first success in the Hungarian National Age Group Championships and as a fourteen year old, she won the European Junior Championship in the 100 yard breaststroke. Within days of her fifteenth birthday, she won the Olympic bronze medal in the 200 meter breaststroke in Atlanta, in 1996.

Leonid “Lenny” Krayzelburg was born in Odessa, the Soviet Union. After spending his boyhood years in what is now the Ukraine, his family immigrated to the United States to escape Soviet Jewish anti Semitism and the call of the Soviet army, settling in a Soviet Jewish enclave in Los Angeles. This soft spoken Russian, a product of the Soviet sports system, wanted to continue his swimming in America, training first at the Jewish Community Center and eventually at the University of Southern California and Trojan Swim Club with coaches Bruce Becker at the Westside JCC, Stu Blumkin at Santa Monica College and Mark Schubert at USC.

She was appointed Knight of the Order of Orang-Nassau in 2011, a chivalric order open to everyone who has earned special merits for society because of her great services to Dutch Water Polo. It is a grade comparable with the ranks of the Order of the British Empire in the UK.

Frank Kurtz grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, a decidedly independent child who began making legends early. Tired of his step-father's beatings, he ran away from home when he was 12. Like a lot of runaways in the 1920's, he found a job hawking newspapers. In a pattern that would repeat itself throughout his life, his charm, winning personality, and sense of adventure soon brought him the attention of wealthy patrons at the Kansas City Athletic Club (KCAC).