Happy Birthday Larisa Ilchenko !!!
Larisa Ilchenko (RUS) 2016 Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES: gold (10km); 2004 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: bronze (5km); 2005 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (5km); 2006 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (5km, 10km); 2007 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (5km, 10km); 2008 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (5km, 10km); 2009 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: silver (5km); 2006 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS: bronze (5km)
This eight-time World Champion was unbeatable in major international competition beginning with her 2004 debut in Dubai as a 16-year-old, to her dramatic victory at the inaugural Olympic open water race at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Larisa Ilchenko was born in 1988, in the Russian city of Volgograd. She began swimming at age four, to build up her strength, but when she began winning competitions, she decided to become a serious competitive swimmer. The 200 and 400-meter freestyle were Larisa’s favorite distances, but she was also quite successful on relay teams, too. She tried open water swimming for the first time in 2004. Although she placed third in the Russian championships in the 5k, her coach decided to take her to the FINA World Championship event in Dubai, over the second place finisher. At age 16, she surprised everyone by beating American Sara McLarty, and won the gold in the 5k by over 30 seconds. Many people in the open water community thought it was a fluke, but Larisa was determined to prove everyone wrong.
She did just that the next year when she won the 5K race at the FINA World Aquatic Championships in Montreal. At the 2006 World Open Water Championships in Naples, Italy, she swam to gold in both the 5K and 10K races, a feat she would repeat at the 2007 FINA World Aquatics Championships, in Melbourne, Australia and the 2008 World Open Water Championships in Seville, Spain.
Three months after her victories in Spain, she competed in the Olympic Games in Beijing, where the 10K Open Water Swimming event became part of the Olympic program for the first time. Larisa Ilchenko won the first gold medal presented in Olympic competition for open water swimming.
It has been said that Larisa Ilchenko was if nothing, predictable. She swam all her races with a proven open water strategy, now dubbed, “The Ilchenko”. She lagged just behind the leaders, drafting off them during 90% of the race, saving the majority of her energy before unleashing herself on the pack with a sprint in the final 200-400 meters. This strategy is now very typical of the world’s very best open water swimmers. It was that strategy that won her five consecutive 5k World Championship titles, as well as titles in the three major pre-Olympic 10k races.
Swimming World Magazine named her Open Water Swimmer of the Year in 2006, 2007 and 2008. She had eight world titles and one Olympic gold under her belt when she decided to retire in 2010. Larisa Ilchenko will always be remembered as the first gold medalist in the women’s Marathon 10km Open Water Swimming event in Olympic history.
On this day in 1915, the amazing Pioneer Honor Swimmer, Alfred Nakache was born in Algeria…..
Alfred Nakache (FRA) 2019 Honor Pioneer Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: 1936 OLYMPIC GAMES: 4TH (4x200m freestyle); 1948 OLYMPIC GAMES; 1938 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS: silver (4x200m freestyle); WORLD RECORD: 200m breaststroke (1941), 3x100m relay 3 strokes (1946); FRENCH CHAMPION: 13 titles, including 9 consecutive: 100m freestyle (1935-38, 41, 42), 200m freestyle (1937-38, 1941–42), 400m freestyle (1942), 4x200m freestyle (1937-39, 1942, 1944-52); 1931 NORTH AFRICAN CHAMPION: 100m freestyle in 1931; 1935 MACCABIAH GAMES: silver (100m freestyle)
The name of Mark Spitz with his unprecedented seven gold medals and seven world records at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games stands out above all other achievements in Jewish sports history, but the title for the first great Jewish butterfly swimmer, belongs to another and this is his story. This is the story of French Algerian, Alfred Nakache.
With shoulders lined with hard and protruding muscles, “Artem” as he was known, took part in his first French Championships, in 1933, in Paris where he later moved from Algeria that summer, to train and to pursue a degree in Physical Education. At the 1934 French Nationals, he placed second in the 100m freestyle, behind his idol, Jean Taris. In 1935, Artem was one of 1,000 Jewish athletes who traveled to Tel Aviv to attend the second annual Maccabiah Games.
In front of Hitler, in 1936, at the Berlin Olympic Games, Nakache finished fourth in the 4×200m freestyle relay along with teammates, Christian Talli, René Cavalero and Jean Taris. Although they didn’t make the podium, they had the pleasure of beating the Germans -who finished fifth- in their home country.
Between 1935 and 1938, Artem Nakache won seven national titles and began training in the new butterfly-breaststroke. After receiving his certificate as a professor of Physical Education, in 1939, he stopped training to join the French Air Force in preparation for war with Germany.
In the early part of the 1940’s, Nakache was forced to flee to Toulouse, into the unoccupied “Free Zone”, with his new wife Paule. There he was welcomed like a son by two historical figures of French swimming, coach Alban Minville and Jules Jany. He was provided a gym to run and he began training with Minville’s Toulouse Olympic Employee’s Club Dauphins. In 1941 and 1942 Nakache won six French National titles, but the high point of his career came on July 6th, 1941—when he broke American Jack Kasley’s world record, and Germany’s Joachim Balke’s European record, in the 200m breaststroke with a time of 2:36.8. His world record would last five years, until broken in 1946 by Hall of Famer Joe Verdeur of the USA.
As anti-Semitic persecution was intensifying across Europe, the French media was split in their support for Nakache. While Jean Borotra, the courageous Vichy Commissioner of Sport and Wimbledon tennis champion, celebrated his achievements, others called for his exclusion from national competitions and the record books because of his “Jewishness.”
In 1943, the French Swimming Federation finally gave in to the pressure from the Germans and banned Alfred Nakache from swimming in their 1943 National Championships. Although many of the country’s best swimmers refused to compete without Nakache, their support couldn’t save him from the Nazis. Finally, in December of 1943, Nakache, his wife and daughter, were arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Upon arrival he was immediately separated from his family.
Toward the end of the war, Nakache was moved to Buchenwald, where he was freed by the Allies in 1945. Of the 1,368 men, women and children in their death camp convoy, Nakache was one of only 47 who survived. His wife and daughter did not. Four months later and weighing less than 100 pounds, he returned to Toulouse, where he lived with the Jany family. Amazingly, less than a year after the liberation of Buchenwald, he was part of the French team in 1946 that set a world record in the 3×100m medley relay and reclaimed his title as French national champion in the 200m breaststroke.
He completed a truly remarkable comeback by qualifying for the 1948 French Olympic Team in two sports. At the London Games, 34-year-old Alfred Nakache swam well enough to reach the semi-finals in the 200m breaststroke, and after swimming concluded, he was a member of the French water polo team that finished in sixth place overall.
Nakache retired from swimming in the early 1950s and devoted himself to his gym and teaching. In addition, he helped train 1952 Olympic champion Jean Boiteux. With his long over-due induction, Nakache will forever be reunited with his idol, Jean Taris, his coach Alban Minville and world-record setting relay teammates, Georges Vallery and Alex Jany, into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Open Water Swimmer, Mercedes Gleitze was born on this day in 1900…
Mercedes Gleitze (GBR) 2014 Honor Pioneer Open Water Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: BRITISH LONG DISTANCE SWIMMER: 1921-1932; FIRST EUROPEAN FEMALE TO SWIM THE ENGLISH CHANNEL: 1927; FIRST SWIMMER TO COMPLETE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR: 1928; COMPLETED 51 ENDURANCE SWIMS, HALF OF THEM LASTING OVER 26 HOURS.
When Winston Churchill defined success as going from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm, he might have been thinking of Mercedes Gleitze.
She worked as a stenographer but dreamed of being a professional swimmer and the first woman to swim across the English Channel. But swimming the Channel would not be easy for Mercedes Gleitze. She made her first attempt in 1922, failed seven times and lost her dream to Gertrude Ederle in 1926. But she had a never-say-die spirit and became the first English woman to conquer the Channel, on her eighth attempt, in 1927.
Mercedes Gleitze may have been lost to history if the Channel Swimming Association had not questioned the legitimacy of her swim. She was so upset by the insinuation of cheating, that she announced she would swim it again 14 days later, to prove the naysayers wrong. Of course this caused a big media stir, and brought her to the attention of Hans Wilsdorf, founder of the Rolex watch company. For what she called her “vindication swim” Wilsdorf asked her to wear his newly invented “Oyster,” the world’s first waterproof watch. She agreed and wore it on a ribbon around her neck. Afterwards, the Oyster was found to have kept perfect time throughout its immersion. The swim itself, however, was not successful . The water was much colder than it had been a fortnight earlier and Mercedes had to be pulled out of the sea. Still, the Association admired her pluck, acknowledged her courage in undertaking this swim and agreed to recognize her first swim. It also proved to be a brilliant piece of marketing for the Rolex.
It wasn’t just her association with Rolex that made Mercedes Gleitze an international sports celebrity. In the years that followed, she set dozens of marathon and endurance records around the globe. The media followed her every move and marketers established connections between her stamina and glamour – with products as varied as honey, tea, whiskey and corsets. Her reputation was further enhanced when she established a Fund for Destitute Men and Women.
In an era when women were taught to believe that their role in life was purely domestic, the star persona of Mercedes Gleitze inspired women and girls around the globe to realize they were not weak and fragile human beings.
Happy Birthday Michael Wenden !!!
MICHAEL WENDEN (AUS) 1979 Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1968 gold (100m, 200m freestyle), silver (800m freestyle relay), bronze (400m freestyle relay); WORLD RECORDS: 6; WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: 1973 (1 silver, 1 bronze); AUSTRALIAN CHAMPIONSHIPS: 10; COMMONWEALTH GAMES: 1966, 1970, 1974 (9 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze); His honors include the Royal Order of the British Empire.
In 1968 Michael Wenden was the first man to beat Don Schollander in the 200 freestyle in more than 5 years. It was in the 200m finals at Mexico City. In these Games, Wenden went a faster World Record time every time he hit the water. In the 100m freestyle final he beat Ken Walsh, the World Record holder, by six-tenths in 52.2, and in the 200m, Schollander, the World Record holder by six-tenths in 1:55.2. He came back another day and yet another to anchor the 400m freestyle relay in 51.7 and the 800m freestyle relay in 1:54.3. He came back once more to anchor the 400m medley relay with 51.4, all in a losing cause if you can consider Olympic silver and bronze relays as losers. Wenden came out of retirement to dominate his third Commonwealth Games in 1974 at Christchurch where he took off his suit (under a robe) and waved it to the standing, clapping, cheering crowd.
Happy Birthday Jodie Henry !!!
Jodie Henry (AUS) 2015 Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: 2004 OLYMPIC GAMES: gold (100m freestyle, 4x100m medley, 4x100m freestyle); 2003 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: silver (100m freestyle), bronze (4x100m medley, 4x100m freestyle); 2005 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (100m freestyle, 4x100m medley, 4x100m freestyle); 2007 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (4x100m freestyle); 2002 COMMONWEALTH GAMES: gold (100m freestyle, 4x100m freestyle, 4x100m medley), silver (50m freestyle); 2006 COMMONWEALTH GAMES: gold (4x100m freestyle), silver (50m freestyle, 100m freestyle); 2002 PAN PACIFIC GAMES: gold (4x100m freestyle , 4x100m medley), silver (50m freestyle, 100m freestyle)
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.
Jodie made her first appearance on the international stage at the Commonwealth Youth Games of 2000, held in Edinburgh, Scotland. She proudly represented Australia by bringing home five gold medals. At the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games, she won the Women’s 100 meter freestyle, took silver in the 50 meter freestyle as well as being a member of the gold medal winning relay team. Later that same year, Henry competed at the Pan Pacific Championships and helped Australia take gold from the United States in the freestyle and medley relays.
At the 2003 World Championships, Jodie won the silver medal in the 100 meter freestyle and picked up bronze in the both the 4 x 100 free and 4 x 100 medley relays.
The Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, held in Athens, Greece, proved to be the pinnacle of Jodie Henry’s career. For her first medal winning performance, she anchored the Australian Women’s 4 x 100 meter freestyle relay team that won gold in world record time of 3:35.94. In the semi-finals of the individual 100 meter freestyle event, she broke teammate Libby Lenton’s world record with a time of 53.32, and went on to win the gold medal – the first to do so since Hall of Famer Dawn Fraser did it 40 years earlier. She picked up her third gold medal anchoring the 4 x 100 meter medley relay in another world record time.
In November of 2004, Jodie Henry was named the Australian Swimmer of the Year, becoming just the third woman in 15 years to take the honor, breaking Ian Thorpe’s five-year streak of receiving the award. She also was awarded the Order of Australia Medal.
After the 2004 Olympic Games, Henry followed her one and only coach, Shannon Rollason, to the Australian Institute of Sport, in Canberra, as she looked ahead to the Games in Beijing. At the 2005 World Championships in Montreal, she won the gold medal in the 100 meters with a time of 54.18. That came on top of her leadoff role in Australia’s victorious 4 x 100 meter freestyle relay team and second relay gold as a heat swimmer in the 4 x 100 meter medley relay. At the 2007 World Aquatic Championships in Melbourne, Henry anchored the Australian 4 x 100 freestyle relay team in world championship record time of 3:35.48 to win gold, again ahead of the USA.
A combination of health and motivational issues derailed her hopes for the 2008 Olympic Games and she announced her retirement from swimming in 2009, at the age of 25. Today, Jodie Henry lives in Brisbane with her husband, Tim Notting, a now retired Australian football star, and their three children.
Happy Birthday Laura Wilkinson !!!
Laura Wilkinson (USA) 2017 Honor Diver
FOR THE RECORD: 2000 OLYMPIC GAMES: gold (10m platform); 2004 OLYMPIC GAMES: 5th (10m platform); 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES: participant; 2005 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (10m platform); 1998 GOODWILL GAMES: gold (10m platform); 1997-1999 NCAA: 10m champion
Inspired by the publicity surrounding Romanian gymnastic guru Béla Károlyi’s arrival to her home town of Houston, Texas, in 1981, Laura Wilkinson fell in love with gymnastics and dreamed of being in the 1996 Olympic Games. After years of training her gymnastic career ended when a growth spurt made her too tall for the sport. Then she discovered diving. In spite of being told by one of her teachers that she was too old to start a new sport at the age of 15, Laura plunged in and “fell in love with the sport on the first day.”
Wilkinson didn’t go very far her first year, but the next year, in 1995, she won her first US National Title, and earned a bronze medal at the FINA World Cup in the 10m synchronized diving event, with partner Patty Armstrong. Earning a scholarship to the University of Texas, she won the NCAA 10m platform title as a freshman and then won both the 3m and 10m titles at the USA Diving Nationals. In 1998, she gave up her scholarship after winning the Goodwill Games gold medal, to turn pro and train for the 2000 Olympic Games at the Woodlands with coach Kenny Armstrong.
Three months before the Olympic trials, she was doing a typical warm-up somersault, when she landed on a block of wood and broke her right foot in three places. To fix it, doctors had to re-break everything. They also found she had a stress fracture on her left foot as well. It appeared that another Olympic dream was at an end. Together, with her coach, Wilkinson embarked on a brutal training regime. She also watched an “insane amount of video tape” and “visualized every dive” to keep her “head in the game.”
Although her foot was still not fully recovered when she started to train again three weeks before the trials, her perseverance paid off as she won the trials and qualified for her first Olympic team.
Three months later, while wearing a protective shoe that enabled her walk up the ladder to the platform, Wilkinson battled back from eighth place and a 60-point deficit after the semifinals to record one of the biggest upsets in Olympic diving history. The turning point came in the third dive of the final round, a reverse two-and-a-half somersault, which Wilkinson performed perfectly, entering the water knife straight with barely a ripple. She went on to win over the favored Chinese diver, Li Na by a minuscule 1.7 points. Her win was the first in the 10m platform event by an American since Leslie Bush in 1964 and the accomplishment earned her an appearance on a Wheaties’ cereal box and a finalist for the prestigious Sullivan Award as one of the nation’s outstanding athletes.
In 2004, although Laura won the World Cup she finished a disappointing fifth at the Olympic Games in Athens. But she came back the next year to win the gold medal at the FINA World Championships in Montreal. She retired after competing in her third Olympic Games in Beijing as a14-time US National team member (1995-2008), a 19-time US National Champion and one of the greatest divers of all time.
Beginning with her gold medal in the 10m platform event at the 1998 Goodwill Games, Laura Wilkinson is one of the few divers in the world to claim individual gold medals at every major international diving competition during her career. In addition to winning the Goodwill Games, she won gold medals at the 2000 Olympic Games, the 2004 FINA World Cup and the 2005 FINA World Championships.
On this day 130 years ago, the great Yale man, Robert H. Kiphuth was born !!
ROBERT J. H. KIPHUTH (USA) 1965 Honor Coach
FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1932, 1936, 1948 (U.S. Olympic Men’s Swimming Team Head Coach); Yale University Swimming Coach for over 30 years, winning 200 consecutive meets, National AAU Team Championships, NCAA Championships; Introduced dry land exercises to swim training; National AAU Treasurer; AAU Youth Fitness Director.
On numbers of dual meet victories (only 10 losers in 42 years), numbers of Eastern Intercollegiate titles (38), numbers of times as U.S. Olympic coach (5), numbers of swim trips overseas (33), and numbers of AAU National Team Championships (14), no coach has been so successful as Yale’s Bob Kiphuth. Perhaps the highlight of his career was Kiphuth’s 1948 Men’s U.S. Olympic swimming team, the only team in history to win first place in every event.
Kiphuth came from humble beginnings in Tonawanda, New York, and while this Buffalo area has never been famous for swimmers, it is another Oxford, Ohio, as a spawning ground for coaches, including Kiphuth, Matt Mann, Uhro Saari, George Breen and Harry Hainsworth. Originally an exercise-gymnastics-fitness instructor, Kiphuth came down from the gym to take over the swim team at the old Carnegie Pool when Matt Mann left Yale after 1917. His success was instant and continual.
More than any other coach, Kiphuth was responsible for adding dry land exercises and cross-country running to swimming programs. His success changed the long entrenched theories that swimming muscles had to be soft and trained only in the water. Kiphuth was accepted in Physical Education circles where his articles and several books made universal knowledge the techniques that had been kept secret in a few coaches’ minds. He was the first editor and publisher of “Swimming World” magazine.
As Athletic Director and Physical Education professor at Yale, as a much traveled ambassador of swimming, Kiphuth played a key roll in sports administration, coordination and politics helping to break down much of the traditional thinking that a coach is a trainer that should be seen and not heard. Kiphuth was a founder of the Council for National Cooperation in Aquatics, a charter Vice President of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, a director of the Boys Clubs of America, the National Art Museum of Sports, the President’s Fitness Council, National Swim Chairman of the AAU and many other executive-administrative functions other than coaching.
At Yale, he was a counselor to his many great swimmers out of the water but a very tough taskmaster to both swimmers and staff in his famous Payne-Whitney exhibition pool where his swimmers Jimmy McLane, Alan Ford and Jeff Farrell set many of the world records.
Kiphuth was a collector who filled his halls with pictures, clippings and trophies. When his bicycle was parked in the granite hallway of Payne-Whitney it meant the boss was in.
Birthday thoughts for the late Roland Matthes
ROLAND MATTHES (GDR) 1981 Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1968 gold (100m, 200m backstroke), silver (relay); 1972 gold (100m, 200m backstroke), silver (relay), bronze (relay); 1976 bronze (100m backstroke); WORLD RECORDS: 19; WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: 1973 gold (100m, 200m backstroke), silver (relay), bronze (relay); 1975 gold (100m backstroke); EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS: 1970 gold (100m, 200m backstroke; medley relay), silver (100m freestyle), bronze (freestyle relays); 1974 gold (100m, 200m backstroke), silver (100m butterfly), bronze (relay); EAST GERMAN CHAMPIONSHIPS: 22; U.S. OPEN RECORD: 1
Roland Matthes, like that other great backstroke Hall of Famer Adolph Kiefer, is known as much for how long he did it as for what he did, which was to stay unbeaten in world competition for seven years between 1967 and 1974. During this period he broke the 100 meter backstroke record 7 consecutive times and the 200 meter backstroke record 9 times. This supreme swimmer from East Germany was the best in the world on his back winning both the 100 and 200 backstroke in 2 Olympics — back to back (1968 and 1972). He was also a world class butterflyer and freestyler winning the silver medals in the European Championships in both. His final act in swimming was the “world’s fastest marriage” as he joined forces with superstar Kornelia Ender in May, 1978.
Sarah Thomas to receive the 2021 Poseidon Award
FORT LAUDERDALE –
The International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF) will recognize Sarah Thomas for her high-level achievement in marathon swimming with the 2021 Poseidon Award. The Award will be presented to Sarah during a future International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame Induction and Award Ceremony. The Poseidon Award is presented annually by International Swimming Hall of Fame to the organization or individual for high level achievement from personal effort or initiative in a field of endeavor that contributes to the performance of marathon swimmers or to the development and status of Marathon Swimming to the world.
This year’s award honors Sarah Thomas. In 2019, she was the first swimmer to ever complete a 4-way English Channel Swim (132 km in 54 hours and 10 minutes). Additionally, she has completed two other long swims; Lake Champlain (168.3 km in 67 hours and 16 minutes) in 2017 and Lake Powell (128.7 mk in 56 hours and 5 minutes) in 2016. This trio of swims are the top three longest, current neutral swims in history. In 2017, Sarah was diagnosed with breast cancer, for which she underwent aggressive treatment of chemo, surgery, and radiation therapy. Six months following the completion of cancer treatment, Sarah completed the epic Cook Strait swim in New Zealand and six months after that, she finished her 4-way English Channel swim. Her courageous comeback has been an inspiration for many and generated great media coverage for our sport: ESPNw, Sports Illustrated, Inside Edition, Good Morning America, Good Morning Britain, etc.
She was also the Race Director for the unique Cliff Backyard Ultra Marathon Swim (USA) in 2018 and 2019.
She was inducted as an Honor Swimmer in the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame (IMSHOF) in 2018. For her substantial contributions to marathon swimming on the international stage, Sarah has been awarded the 2021 Poseidon Award.
For additional information, please call Ned Denison in Ireland, (+353) 87-987-1573, or ISHOF at (954) 462-6536, or visit http//:www.ishof.org
Happy Birthday Mel Stewart !!!
MELVIN STEWART (USA) 2002 Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: 1992 OLYMPICS: gold (200m butterfly), gold (4x100m medley relay), bronze (4x200m freestyle relay); 1988 OLYMPIC GAMES: 5th (200m butterfly); ONE WORLD RECORD: 200m butterfly; 1991 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (200m butterfly); 14 U.S. NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS: 7-200m butterfly, 6-200m butterfly, 1-100y butterfly; TWO NCAA NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS: 200m butterfly.
Melvin Stewart was known as the greatest 200m butterfly swimmer of his era. Not only did this 14-time National champion win the 200m event at the 1991 Perth World Championships, defeating legendary Hall of Famers Michael Gross of Germany and Tamas Darnyi of Hungary, he became the gold medallist at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics in Olympic record time, 1:56.26. Stewart won a second gold as a preliminary heat member of the 4x100m medley relay and a bronze on the 4x200m freestyle relay. In his first Olympic Games at Seoul in 1988, he placed fifth in the 200m butterfly. Stewart held the world record at 1:55.69 from 1991 to 1995 when it was broken by Denis Pankratov of Russia.
It all began for Stewart in 1974. Under the direction of Coach Frankie Bell at the Johnston Memorial YMCA pool in Charlotte, North Carolina, he won National YMCA titles. Bell taught him stroke technique and built his love for the sport, motivating the already inspired youngster with a banana split every time he won. By age 10, he was ranked among the top 10 in the nation in his age group in 16 events. “Little Melvin,” as he was called, grew up on the grounds of Heritage USA, the PTL Ministries Theme Park and religious retreat where his father was recreation director of Jim and Tammy Bakker’s Heritage Church and Athletic Director of his school, Heritage Academy.
Mel became a butterfly side-breather, preferring this unconventional breathing technique to the more traditional head up breathing common to most butterfly swimmers. At 6’1”, 180 lbs., he was a natural. He had flexibility, quick hands and feet, great turning ability and tremendous kicking power. His arms reached from lane rope to lane rope.
In need of some academic tutoring, his mentor, George Baxter, enrolled Stewart at Mercersburg Academy, a small boarding school known for its academics and competitive swimming teams. In his three years there, Mel became an honor student and a leader.
He followed his Mercersburg coach John Trembley to the University of Tennessee and swam on to international stardom one year later, winning the 200m butterfly at the Goodwill Games of 1986. He repeated with Goodwill Game wins in 1990 and 1994 in Moscow, and at the Pan Pacific Championships of 1987, 1989 and 1991. While at Tennessee, he won two NCAA titles in the 200y butterfly.
Stewart holds the record in United States Swimming for winning the most national championships (14) in one event (200 butterfly), more than any other male swimmer in USA history.
After failing to qualify for the 1996 Olympic Team, Mel began to pursue his second dream of acting. He appeared in plays, movies and television shows. He served as an ABC Sports field reporter, hosted ESPN’s “American Outback” and appeared in “Pentathlon,” starring Dolph Lundgren. Stewart was also a hotel lifeguard in “Baywatch.” He is a partner, producer and writer for Symbiotic Entertainment.
*write-up from 2002
