Happy BIrthday to Coach Charles “Red” Silvia !!!
CHARLES SILVIA (USA) 1976 Honor Contributor
FOR THE RECORD: U.S. National Collegiate record holder: 300yd individual medley; College All-American; Captain, Springfield College Swim Team; Multi-sports coach: New Hampton School; Wibraham Academy; New Haven YMCA; Springfield College (from 1937); Assistant Coach: 1956 U.S. Olympic Team; Developed 50 college swim coaches; His swimmers set 14 World Records; President, College Swimming Coaches Association of America; President, Board Chairman, ISHOF; Recipient of Collegiate & Scholastic Swimming Trophy; Honoree in Helms (Citizens Savings) Hall of Fame; Author of Life Saving & Water Safety Today.
Charles “Red” Silvia coached Bill Yorzyk in a 20 yd. pool and brought him from a non-swimmer freshman in college, to a graduate student with Pan-American and Olympic gold medals, 13 World Records in freestyle and butterfly, and US. National AAU Championships in butterfly and individual medley. Yorzyk won the USA’s only 1956 Olympic gold in men’s swimming. In 1973, Davis Hart, another of Sylvia’s swimmers, set the record for the English Channel. In addition to revolutionizing the dolphin-butterfly stroke in the mid-1950s, Sylvia, in the late 40s, was the first to embrace mouth-to-mouth insufflations, the method of choice for artificial respiration. In 1967 Coach Silvia had 37 of his former pupils as college swim coaches, many more as medical doctors. He is a prime example of the multiplication factor in education. He has used swimming as an effective medium for the development of human potential and sent his students out into life with a sense of social responsibility that includes propagating his teaching in every possible environment.
Happy Birthday Maureen O’Toole !!!
Maureen O’Toole (USA) 2010 Honor Water Polo Player
She is a six-time World Water Polo Female Athlete of the Year and played on the Women’s U.S. National Team for over 21 years. Between 1978 and 2000, she competed in six World Championships and seven FINA World Cups. Before joining the Women’s National Team, she played California high school and college water polo on the boy’s and men’s teams as there were no school teams for women. At age 39 at the Olympic Games’ debut of women’s water polo during the 2000 Sydney Games, she capped her career with an Olympic silver medal.
As a Salute to Women’s History Month, we celebrate Open Water Swimming Pioneer Lynne Cox
LYNNE COX (USA) 2000 Honor Open Water Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: First crossing of the Catalina Island Channel (1971) 12:36 hrs.; Women’s and men’s record crossing of the English Channel (1972) 9:57 hrs.; Women’s and men’s record crossing of the English Channel (1973) 9:36 hrs., Catalina Island Channel crossing record (1974) 8:48 hrs.; Cook Straits between North and South Islands of New Zealand (1975) 12 hrs., 2 min.; Straits of Magellan (Chile), Oresund and Skagerrak (Scandinavia) (1976) 1 hr., 2 min.; Aleutian Islands (three channels) 1977; Cape of Good Hope (S. Africa) 1979; Around Joga Shima (Japan) 1980; Across three lakes in New Zealand’s Southern Alps (1983); Twelve difficult “Swims Across America” (1984); “Around the World in 80 Days”, 12 extremely challenging swims totaling 80+ miles (1985); Across the Bering Strait, U.S. to Soviet Union (1987) 2 hr., 6 min.; Across Lake Baikal, Soviet Union (1988); Across the Beagle Channel between Chile and Argentina (1990); Across the Spree River between the newly united German Republics (1990); Lake Titicaca Swim (1992).
Lynne Cox became the best cold water, long distance swimmer the world has ever seen. Her 5 foot 6 inch, 180-pound frame of a body was at one with the water. With a body density precisely that of sea water, her 36% body fat (normal is 18% to 25%) gave her neutral buoyancy. Her energy could be used all for propulsion and not to keep afloat. Propelling though the most treacherous waters of the globe is what Lynne Cox did best.
When her parents moved the family from New Hampshire to Los Alamitos, California in 1969 so that Lynne and her older brother and two sisters could receive better swim coaching, Hall of Fame coach Don Gambril, at the Phillips 66 Swim Club, took her under his guidance. What he saw was a large-boned girl with boundless energy and great upper body strength who could slice through the water like a porpoise. When she was 14 and already tired of “going back and forth in the pool and going nowhere”, Gambril urged her to enter a series of rough water swims near Long Beach. As a result in 1971, at age 14, she swam the 31-mile Catalina Channel in Southern California with four other friends. She loved it. The chill, the chop, the solitude, and the liberation were all exhilarating to Lynne. “Everything opened up. It was like going from a cage to freedom.”
For the next two decades, Lynne competed against the elements in swims which took her to all the major bodies of water in the world, many of which had not been crossed before and most of which had not been done by a woman. Her study of history at the University of California Santa Barbara may have been a catalyst in choosing which swims to pursue. It became her desire to use her swims to help bring people together, to work toward a more peaceful world. This realization was sparked during her 1975 swim as the first woman to swim the 10-mile Cook Straits in New Zealand in 12 hours 2-1/2 minutes. During this difficult swim, the outcry of support from the New Zealand people was all she needed to finish this 50 degree Fahrenheit swim, even when the tides and current had taken her farther away from the starting point after the first five hours of the crossing.
Her most famous swim was in 1987, eleven years after her father had planted the seed in her head. Lynne completed 2.7 miles in the Bering Straits, 350 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska where the water temperature ranges from 38-42 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps the most incredible of cold water swims, her 2 hours, 16 minutes from Little Diomede (USA) to Big Diomede (USSR) astonished the physiologists who were monitoring her swim. It marked one of the coldest swims ever completed. One can’t get much colder. After this temperature, the water turns to ice. It was a swim that brought the United States and Soviet Union together in an exchange of glasnost and perestroika. In Washington, Presidents Reagan and Gorbachov toasted Lynne’s swim saying that she “proved by her courage how closely to each other our peoples live”. Before this time, at the start of the Cold War, the families of the Diomede Islands had been split and had not been permitted to see one another since 1948.
Lynne is the purist of marathon swimmers. She does not wear a wet suit in frigid water and does not use a cage in shark infested waters. Her swims in Iceland’s 40 degree F Lake Myzvtan and Alaska’s 38 degree F Glacier Bay, where the lead boat had to break a path in the one quarter inch ice, were done wearing only a swim suit, cap and goggles. She wanted to do more than just achieve times and set records. And she did. But in the process, she became the fastest person to swim the English Channel (1972 and again in 1973), the first person to swim the Straits of Magellan (Chile) 4-1/2 miles, 42 degree F (1976), Norway to Sweden, 15 miles 44 degree F (1976), three bodies of water in the Aleutian Islands (USA) 8 miles total, 44 degree F (1977) and around the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) 10 miles, 70 degree F which attracted sharks, jellyfish and sea snakes (1978). Many other swims included Lake Biakal in the Soviet Union (1988), the Beagle Channel of Argentina and Chile (1990) and around the Japanese Island of Joga Shima. In 1994 at the age of 37 years, she swam the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea joining the 15 miles of 80-degree water between Egypt, Israel and Jordan. She has swum Lake Titicaca in the Andes Mountains, the world’s highest navigable lake.
Lynne works as an author, motivational lecturer, and teaches swimming technique both in the pool and open water.
Happy BIrthday Coach Bill Sweetenham !!!
Bill Sweetenham (AUS) 2018 Honor Coach
FOR THE RECORD: AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL TEAM HEAD COACH: 1980 – 1988; 14 OLYMPIC SWIMMERS, WINNING 27 MEDALS IN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS AND OLYMPIC GAMES; NATIONAL PERFORMANCE DIRECTOR: BRITISH SWIMMING: 2000-2007, SPAIN: 2008-2011, SINGAPORE: 2008-2012
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.
After one serious transgression, the penance demanded by his father was for Bill to teach a fellow miner’s thalidomide child how to swim at the local town pool for free. Bill was 17 and knew nothing about teaching or coaching. From the moment he started working with the boy, he discovered his passion to become a teacher and coach and became totally committed to be the best he could be.
He started coaching at the Mt. Isa community pool and quickly developed a team that ranked third in the country. Recruited to replace Hall of Famer Laurie Lawrence at Carina, a club in Brisbane, he earned a reputation for being a tough and demanding coach – and for developing three of the greatest distance swimmers in history, Hall of Famers Steve Holland, Tracey Wickham and Michelle Ford.
In 1980, Bill was recruited to work at the newly formed Australian Institute of Sport and was named Head Olympic Coach for the 1980 Moscow Games. He was also awarded a Churchill Fellowship, which sent him to the USA for a year to study all aspects of coaching under Hall of Fame greats Nort Thornton, Don Gambril, George Haines and Doc Counsilman.
In 1983, while on a training trip with the Australian team in West Germany, Bill suffered a catastrophic leg injury in a freak road accident. It resulted in major surgery that continues to present him with challenges and hardships to this day. Dealing with this injury, he believes, taught him to be both a better person and a better coach – and he continues to learn from it.
In 1990, after serving as the head swimming coach at the Australian Institute of Sport for ten years and being in charge of many of Australian swimming teams at the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and other events since 1978, Bill found a new challenge in an offer to develop swimming in Hong Kong. Four years later, he was back in Australia as the National Youth Coach. Favored to replace Don Talbot as National Head Coach after the 2000 Sydney Games, he took an offer from British Swimming instead. Britain had been in a downward spiral with its swim program for many years and in Sydney the Brits returned home without a single medal for its swimmers for the first time in history. They wanted Bill Sweetenham as their High Performance Director and he was excited by the challenge.
After eight years on the job, Bill transformed British Swimming. Under his leadership and management, Britain’s swimmers won 18 World Championship titles and produced their best results in the Commonwealth Games, World Championships and Olympic Games. He created and implemented an early talent identification and development program that many experts believe is responsible for Britain’s success in the pool today.
Bill Sweetenham stepped down from his role with British Swimming and retired from day-to-day coaching in 2007. During his career he served as head National Team Coach at five Olympic Games, coached 27 medalists at the Olympic Games and World Championships and nine world record holders. He is an accomplished and published author and is a internationally recognized consultant for his strategic planning capabilities in high performance sport and business. When not involved in a coaching education program, he is searching the world for more knowledge and experience, and for the next piece of information that will improve athlete and coaching performance.
Happy Birthday Lynn Burke !!!
LYNNE BURKE (USA) 1978 Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1960 gold (100m backstroke; 400m medley relay); WORLD RECORDS: 6; NATIONAL AAU titles: 6 (100m backstroke, 2 relays); AMERICAN RECORDS: 7; Lowered the 100m backstroke World Record four times within three months.
The significant point about Lynn Burke’s backstroke World and Olympic Records, according to her coach, George Haines, “is a big chunk she took out of the current world class backstrokers’ time, dropping two seconds in the 100m backstroke.” She was the first American woman to win the Olympic 100m backstroke in 28 years. Lynn burst across the horizon like a flying fish going from virtual obscurity to the best in the world in less than two years, not only defeating all contemporaries, but finally wiping out the oldest record in the books, Hall of Famer Cor Kint’s 1939 record that had lasted 21 years. A New York model, author, business woman, and working mother of three children, Lynn Burke is glamorous proof that a swimmer can set records in more than the water.
Happy Birthday Penny Lee Dean !!!
PENNY DEAN (USA) 1996 Honor Open Water Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: 1978 Established English Channel crossing record (England to France, 7 hrs. 40 min.); 1979 Professional Marathon Swimming Circuit (Women’s World Champion); four Catalina Channel crossings (1976-1977); 12 WORLD RECORDS; Head Coach: U.S. National Long Distance team (1984-1988); Head Women’s Swimming and Water Polo Coach: Pomona College since 1979.
When she was ten years old, she came within 400 meters of swimming the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. But tired and with the water a frigid 52 degrees Fahrenheit and the escort boat an arms reach away, Penny Dean made a decision that would determine the course of her life for the next thirteen years and make Marathon swimming history – she got out. It was an understandable decision for a ten year old, but once on shore she mistook her mother’s look of guilt that she had pushed her daughter too hard and into failure, as a look of disappointment. She had let pain and fatigue distract her from her goal, and she vowed never to let that happen again. From that summer day in 1965, Penny Dean embarked on a challenging course that thirteen years later would lead to one of the greatest marathon swims in history.
She had a head start – she had been swimming since the age of 20 months in both San Francisco and Santa Clara – hot beds for swimming in California. She competed in AAU swimming for seventeen years in both pool Nationals and Long Distance Open Water Nationals, winning the Three Mile National Championship in 1971. As a swimmer for Pomona College, she was a six-time All-American. By 1976, she swam from the mainland of California to Catalina Island in the overall world record of 7 hours, 15 minutes 55 seconds – 1 and 1/2 hours under the former record. The next year she set the world record from the island to the mainland on her way to a 50 mile double crossing of the Catalina Channel in 20 hours and 3 minutes. These swims set the stage for her greatest challenge.
Tennis players have Wimbledon; runners have the Boston Marathon; swimmers have the English Channel. Penny not only wanted to be amongst the successful eighteen percent of swimmers who actually complete the English Channel, she wanted to break all the records. The water was 55 degrees, the tides were challenging and the channel is vast to the lone swimmer. A core of inner toughness kept her swimming, and a remarkable 7 hours, 40 minutes after she left England, her toes scraped against the sand of the French coast with a greeting committee of a few shocked shell hunters. Her time broke the world record by 1 hour and 5 minutes and was so impressive that it took another sixteen years before Chad Hundeby broke her record in September of 1995. Penny proved once again that women can swim faster and longer than men in Marathon Swimming.
She continued her long distance swimming career for another three years, winning at Lake St. John, LaTugue, Lakes Memphremagog and Paspebiac in Quebec, and Atlantic City in New Jersey, setting women’s world records in most of them. She was Women’s World Professional Champion in 1979 accumulating 1,000 points over her next rival.
Penny became a Professor of Education and Head Swimming Coach at Pomona College, but not before serving as the U.S. National Team Coach of Open Water Swimming from 1988 through 1991, Head Coach of U.S. teams to the 1991 Pan Pacific Championships, 1991 World Championships, 1982 and 1990 Windermere Championships, 1990 English Channel Race, 1984 and 1989 Catalina Channel Race and coach of nine solo Catalina Channel crossers. She was president of the College Swimming Coaches Association of America from 1985 to 1987 and served on the NCAA Swimming Committee. She has presented numerous international clinics on marathon and open water swimming, written articles for swimming publications and authored “How to Swim a Marathon,” with printings in 1985, 1988 and 1992, and “History of the Catalina Swims,” revised four times since 1985.
Penny has been a pathfinder in her swimming career. Studying law, she receives her Ph.D. in 1996. She stands as the tallest and proudest five-foot-two inch, 125 pound marathon swimmer the world has known. What the world did not know was that she swam her way to victory with no anterior artery blood supply to her left arm. She used the other part of her body for that – her guts.
Happy Birthday Igor Poliansky !!!
IGOR POLIANSKY (URS) Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: 1988 OLYMPIC GAMES: gold (200m backstroke), bronze (100m backstroke, 4×100 medley relay); FIVE WORLD RECORDS: 3-100m backstroke, 1-200m backstroke, 1-200m backstroke (S.C.); 1985 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS:gold (100m backstroke, 200m backstroke); 1986 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (100m backstroke, 200m backstroke), bronze (4x100m medley relay); 1986 GOODWILL GAMES: gold (100m backstroke, 200m backstroke); 1987 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS: silver (200m backstroke).
Igor Poliansky was the premier backstroke swimmer following the Olympic Games of 1984 when USA’s Rick Carey won both the 100m and 200m backstrokes in Los Angeles. Between 1984 and 1989 Poliansky won every 100m and 200m backstroke event in international competition in which he competed, except one – the 100m at the 1987 European Championships in Strasburg, Austria, where he placed second to teammate Sergei Zabolotnov.
Poliansky emerged as the world backstroke leader at the 1985 European Championships in Sofia, beating Dirk Richter (GDR) and Zabolotnov (URS), respectively, to win gold medals in both the 100m and 200m events. Poliansky broke the 200m backstroke world record in 1985 at Erfurt, with a time of 1:58.14, a record that stood for over six years until Spain’s Martin Zubero broke it using the no-touch backstroke turn adopted in competition that year.
In 1986, Igor won both backstroke events at the Goodwill Games and the World Championships at Madrid, edging out his German Democratic Republic opponents. In 1988 at Tallinn, he broke Rick Carey’s 4 1/2-year-old 100m backstroke world record and repeated it again two more times. That same year in Bonn, he set the 200m backstroke short course world record for a total of five world records in his career.
Of the 200m race, Igor said, “It’s a very long distance and you have to concentrate very hard in order to pace yourself correctly. This gold medal is the best prize for me, but the 100 is my favorite race.”
At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Poliansky surprised everyone by winning the 200m backstroke ahead of Frank Baltrusch (GDR) and Paul Kingsman (NZL), his arch rivals from the previous four years. He won the bronze medal in the 100m backstroke behind Daichi Suzuki (JPN) and David Berkoff (USA) by less than .2 seconds.
Happy Birthday Sandy Neilson !!!
SANDRA NEILSON (USA) 1986 Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1972 gold (100m freestyle; 2 relays); PAN AMERICAN GAMES: 1971 gold (100m freestyle, relay), silver (relay); WORLD RECORDS: 3 (relays); AMERICAN RECORD: 4 (100m freestyle; 3 relays); AAU NATIONALS: (100yd freestyle; 1 relay); AIAW CHAMPIONSHIPS: 1977 (50yd, 100yd freestyle).
Matt Mann used to say, “So you won, but who’d you beat?” He could never say this to Sandra Neilson, a triple gold medal winner in the 1972 Munich Olympics. In order to win the 100 Meter Freestyle, Sandy had to beat the favorites: the world’s top woman swimmer Shane Gould (Australia) and the top American woman swimmer Shirley Babashoff. By winning the open 100, Neilson also got to anchor both American relays to World Records and thus three gold medals when she was not supposed to win any. Such was the Olympic dream for a 16 year old high school sophomore.
Ironically, Sandra was repeatedly passed over for induction in the International Swimming Hall of Fame because of the four year retirement rule, until, in August 1984, her coach, Texas sports psychologist Keith Bell, protested that she had actually retired for nine years. Sandy fully retired shortly after her 1972 Olympic triumph but decided to try Masters (Old Folks) Swimming nine years later in 1981. When she won “all” in the 25-29 age group she decided to try big time senior swimming again at 28 and is already more than a second under her 1972 Olympic Record time of 58.59. “I want to swim as fast as I can for as long as I can,” says Neilson, who has only seemed to win the big ones in her long career. She has already changed the swimming world’s thinking on what is old . . . move over Phil Niekro, Pete Rose, Walter Spence, and Arne Borg!
Happy Birthday Jane Asher !!!
Jane Asher 2006 Honor Masters Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD (SWIMMER): World Points – 1859, Masters Pre-1986 points – 0, Total Points – 1859; Since 1983, she has competed in four age groups (55-59 thru 70-74); 75 FINA MASTERS WORLD RECORDS; 30 FINA MASTERS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS; FIRST MASTERS SWIMMER TO HOLD ALL THE WORLD FREESTYLE RECORDS IN HER AGE GROUP – short course meters and long course meters – simultaneously.
Jane Asher was born in ‘Nkana, Northern Rhodesia in 1931, but grew up in South Africa, loving the water and having swimming access anytime, anywhere. At the age of 22, in 1953, she moved to Britain to take a post-graduate diploma in personnel management at Manchester University. She swam on the university swim team and realized the swimming advantage she had had as a child living in South Africa. The children of Britain did not have the same access to water privileges Jane had, as during World War II and shortly before her arrival, Britain’s beaches were covered with barbed wire, and pool swimming time was at a premium. Jane started to work as a teacher and coach of school children in her area, beginning with the very basics of the sport.
By 1980, she had set up her own private team. While parents waited for their children during training sessions, Jane thought they could spend their time better in the water than on poolside. Thus began the nucleus of the first Masters swim club of the Amateur Swimming Association (A.S.A.) of Great Britain.
Jane became the catalyst and organized the setting up of the East Anglian Swallow Tail (E.A.S.T.) Club for Masters. Many of the swimmers not only were coached by Jane in this new club, they had been coached by her years before in high school.
In 1992, she and a few E.A.S.T. members successfully ran a seminar specifically for Masters. She started a training camp in the French Alps, maybe the first for Masters at high altitude.
Since 1986, as a world-class Masters swimmer, she has set 75 FINA Masters World Records in the freestyle, I.M., backstroke and sprint butterfly events in the 55-59 through 70-74 age groups. She has won gold medals 30 times at FINA Masters World Championships, 36 at Masters European Championships, 6 at Masters Pan Pacifics, and 95 at British Masters National Championships. She has set 76 Masters European Championship records and 117 British Masters national records. She has gold medals at the National Championships of Britain, Scotland, Wales, France, and Holland. When she turned 70 in 2001, she traveled Britain and Europe to try to swim every long and short course event available. The results – she broke all the British records and a whole lot of World and European records too. Even after total hip replacement in 2002, her times continue to drop.
Happy BIrthday to Honor Swimmer Jenny Fletcher, who was born in 1890….
JENNIE FLETCHER (GBR) 1971 Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1912 gold (4x100m freestyle relay), bronze (100m freestyle); WORLD RECORDS: 100yd freestyle (held for 7 years; broke her own record 11 times); BRITISH CHAMPION: 1906 through 1912.
In the modern Olympic period beginning with the 1896 Games, the first great woman swimmer was Jennie Fletcher of England. Miss Fletcher was born in 1890 in Leichester, the midland’s city that also produced Hall of Famers Matthew Webb, John Jarvis and Henry Taylor. It is ironic that this inland city has turned out the four greatest swimmers in the island country that was the cradle of organized swimming. The public baths in which Jarvis, Taylor and Fletcher worked out in Leichester are still in use now, 75 years later.
The first Olympics to advertise women’s swimming competition were the London Games in 1908.
Jennie, at 18, was at the peak of her career, but the women’s events were cancelled due to the lack of women competitors. She did get to compete in the 1912 Games in Stockholm at the end of her career. She was beaten in the 100 meter freestyle by another Hall of Famer, Australia’s Fanny Durack but she won her gold medal anchoring Great Britain’s 4×100 “Team race” as the freestyle relay was called in those days.
“The crowning moment of my career,” Jennie Fletcher said many years later, “was when King Gustav of Sweden placed the classic laurel wreath on my head, put the gold medal round my neck and said, ‘well done, England’.” This laurel wreath is now on display at the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Interviewed after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and just before her death at 78 in Canada, Miss Fletcher was asked to compare the athletes of the present and those 60 years earlier. “We did not have the time or the training,” she said. “We swam only after working hours and they were 12 hour days and 6 day weeks.”
Among trudgeon-stroking women training after a 60 hour work week, there were none better than Jennie Fletcher. She held the 100 yard freestyle World Record for seven undefeated years and was British champion from 1906 through 1912. During a three year period, she broke her own world record eleven times.
Coached by the great Jack Jarvis and chaperoned by his wife, Jennie’s parents (she was one of eleven children) turned down an offer for her to turn professional at 17 and tour with the world famous Annette Kellerman. While Annette was startling the public with her daring one-piece silk suit styled with long sleeves and legs, Jennie had been wearing a shorter sleeveless knee length version for years. “We were told bathing suits were shocking and indecent and even when entering competition, we were covered with a floor length cloak until we entered the water.
