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

Growing up in the seaside communities of southern California, his love affair with the water came to him naturally. He was introduced to competitive swimming under coach Stacy Zapolski at the Costa Mesa YMCA when he was just five years old. At age eight he moved to a summer swim and water polo league in Corona del Mar with coach Ted Bandaruk. At ten, he joined Junior Lifeguards in Newport Beach before making the move to Irvine’s Novaquatics to swim under Brian Pajer.

Dale Petranech has been a leading figure, promoter, historian and organizer of open water swimming competitions in the United States and around the world for the past 35 years. He has accepted every challenge head on and is well respected internationally for his work.

She learned to swim at the age of four, competed in her first race for the Lompoc (California) Marlins at age six. She even tackled open water swimming before she was 10. By the time she was 15, she was a Junior National Champion, swimming under Coach Mike Troy at the Coronado Navy Swim Association in San Diego. But Karlyn Pipes did not really come into her own until she became a Masters swimmer. Ever her own woman, Karlyn did it her way: backwards. She got faster as she got older.

Enrique Tiraboschi. Lillian Harrison. Jeanette Campbell. Horatio Iglesias. Claudio Plit. These are the great names in Argentine swimming history.

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.

Aleksandr Popov dominated swimming’s marquee events, the 50m and 100m freestyle, and became the world’s premier sprinter during the 1990s. He won a total of nine Olympic medals at three Olympic Games from 1992-2000, including four individual gold medals.

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.