Happy Birthday Maarten van der Weijden !!!
Maarten van der Weijden (NED) 2017 Honor Swimmer
FOR THE RECORD: 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES: gold (10km); 2008 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (25km), bronze: (5km); 2006 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS: silver (10km)
Born in Haastrecht, Netherlands on March 31, 1981, Maarteen van der Weijden, followed in his older sister Etta’s wake in the pool and open water. As a young boy, he liked challenges and at the age of 11 he swam 100x100m in training. From 1998 to 2000 he became a 12-time Dutch national champion at the 1500m freestyle, 400m freestyle, and 5km open water. Then, in 2001, he was diagnosed with acute leukemia and his chances for survival were very small. For the next two years, Maarten had little control over his life and he depended on the medical specialists to guide him through successful chemotherapy treatment and a stem cell transplantation. In 2003 he started to train again and amazingly qualified for the FINA Open Water World Championships in Barcelona. In 2004, he swam across the Ijsselmeer in 4:20.58 hours, breaking the former record by almost 15 minutes to collect 50,000 Euros, which he donated for cancer research. Van der Weijden had his own website named “Maarten van der Weijden zwemt tegen kanker” (Maarten van der Weijden swims against cancer) where he informed his fans about his life and his career. He also collected more money to invest for cancer research. His dream was to become World Champion and over the next few years he trained hard and worked on his tactics. In 2008, he fulfilled this aim when he won the 25km at the World Championships in Seville. He also won a bronze medal in the 5km there and finished fourth at the 10km. This result qualified him for the first 10km open water marathon race at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. There he ended up winning the gold medal on August 21, narrowly edging out David Davies of Great Britain. He thus became the first mens’ Olympic Champion in the 10km open water competition. He announced the end of his professional swimming career during his acceptance speech as Dutch Sportsman of the year in 2008. But that’s not the end of his story.
After writing his own biography, “Better,” in 2009 and a successful career as a finance manager for Unilever, he struck out on his own as an entrepreneur and motivational speaker focusing on healthcare, sports and business. In 2015 he initiated his first “Swim to Fight Cancer” in the cold channel of Den Bosch. It attracted over 500 participants and raised over 500,000 Euros for cancer research. He continues to use swimming to fight cancer, recently swimming the running marathon distance (42km 195m) in the 50m pool of the Pieter van den Hoogenband Swimming Stadium Eindhoven. He has also created a one-man stage show based on his book, “Better.” All one hundred of his shows have been sold out. He has also performed on the TEDx stage in Rotterdam.
On this day in 1905, Coach Ray Daughters was born……
RAY DAUGHTERS (USA) 1971 Honor Coach
FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1936, 1948 (U.S. Women’s Swimming Coach); 1952, 1956, 1964 (Official Swimming Photographer); 1960 (Manager of Men’s Swimming Team); Chairman AAU Men’s Swimming Committee (1957-1959); Chairman U.S. Men’s Olympic Swimming Committee (1960); Coached Washington Athletic Club swimmers to 30 world records, 301 American records, 64 national championships.
Ray Daughters, the late, great coach of the Washington Athletic Club, lived most of his life in Seattle, moving there from Denver when he was ten. He grew up near water and was the sprint and distance swimming champion of the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s. When the Illinois Athletic Club’s record-breaking men’s swimming team, coached by Hall of Famer Bill Bachrach, exhibited in Seattle in 1914, Daughters finished a close second to Arthur Raithel, then the national 500 yard freestyle champion. During World War I, as Chief Petty Officer at the Seattle Naval Training Station, he was in charge of swimming, during which time thousands of men were taught to swim.
Daughters’ two most famous swimmers were Hall of Famers Helene Madison and Jack Medica, the USA’s top freestylers in the 1932 and 1936 Olympics respectively. His other Olympic swimmers were Marylou Petty, Olive McKean and Nancy Ramey. His W.A.C. swimmers over the years held 30 world records, 301 American records and won 64 National Championships.
Daughters started coaching at the Seattle Crystal Pool where he produced Helene Madison and then move d to the Washington Athletic Club when it was built in 1930. He became Director of Athletics in 1942 and retired in December of 1964. Internationally, Daughters wore the USA uniform at every Olympics from 1936 through 1964. He served as Women’s swimming coach in Berlin in 1936 and again at London in 1948.
In 1952, 1956, and 1964 at Helsinki, Melbourne and Tokyo, he was official swimming photographer. In 1960 he was Manager of the men’s swimming team at Rome. During the years 1957-59, he served as Chairman of the AAU Men’s Swimming Committee and in 1960 was Chairman of the U.S. Men’s Olympic Swimming Committee.
Honor Swim Coach Eddie Reese: The End of an Era
by DAN D’ADDONA — SWIMMING WORLD MANAGING EDITOR
29 March 2021, 01:08pm
Commentary: Eddie Reese Era Ended On a High Note; His Legacy Measures Far Beyond Title Banners
Just two days after guiding the University of Texas to its 15th NCAA title, legendary coach Eddie Reese announced on Monday that he is retirng as coach of the Longhorns after 43 years at the helm in Austin. The following commentary was written by Swimming World’s Dan D’Addona following Texas’ latest championship march.
Eddie Reese won his first NCAA title as Texas swimming coach 40 years ago. Fittingly, on the 40th anniversary of that premier championship, the Longhorns won again. He led the Longhorns to plenty in between, too, with the 2021 title the 15th for Texas and for Reese in those 43 seasons, who has now led the Longhorns to a title in five different decades.
Fifteen titles is more than any other coach or program in history, which cements Reese’s legacy as the greatest college swimming coach of all time.
But his legacy isn’t necessarily the championships, but the non-championship seasons.
Reese has coached 43 years. In addition to the 15 NCAA titles, his Texas teams have been runnerup 12 times and third place seven times. The Longhorns have been in the top 10 in the nation for a stunning 40 consecutive seasons and have won 41 consecutive conference championships.
That means in 43 seasons, 27 of them have seen a top-two finish and 34 top-three finishes. The Longhorns have won 140 event titles during that span.
It is simply a dynasty.
“Simply put, Eddie Reese is the greatest coach of all time,” Texas’ Carson Foster said. “If it was ever debated before, it is over now. You can’t argue with 15 national championships in five different decades. He and all of our assistants do an incredible job with recruiting, but also developing, and they have created such a culture with the team where there is not a single person who is complacent with anything but a championship, and that is the culture from day one. We don’t accept anything less. Forty years after he won his first, he won his 15th and that is beyond special for all of us and the Texas alum.”
The 2021 season was a special one for many reasons. The Longhorns endured the pandemic virtually unscathed and took back their title after Cal broke their four-peat streak in 2019.
“Every one of them are different because of the makeup of your team and every one of them has to go through different things. These guys have been through the COVID year and that freeze in Austin. There is something special to overcome every year and this group, they went the whole school year with no positive COVID-19 tests,” Eddie Reese said after the meet.
It was also special because all 20 swimmers and all four divers who competed at the championships scored at least one point, meaning the entire team had a hand in the title. It was a meet won by depth as the Longhorns won a diving event, two relays but no individual swimming races, the first time that has happened for a title seam since 2006.
“Something really special about Eddie is he doesn’t really view us as athletes or point scorers. He views us all as human beings and wants what is best for us as human beings, and that is how it has always been. He always cares even during the hard practices. It makes you see the value in yourself and makes everybody want to be the best,” Drew Kibler said. “The culture makes you want to work and where you can take these roads. Eddie has a different way of going about these things and he is just such a phenomenal man.”
And the greatest coach in the history of college swimming.
Happy Birthday Ilsa Konrads !!!
JOHN & ILSA KONRADS (AUS) 1971 Honor Swimmers
FOR THE RECORD: WORLD RECORDS: 100m backstroke (stood for 21 years); 150 yd, 200m backstroke (stood for 11 years).
Between January 1958 and February 1960, the Konrads Kids established 37 world records.
John: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1960 gold (1500m freestyle), bronze (400m freestyle); WORLD RECORDS: included 200m, furlong (220yd), 400m, 800m, quarter-mile, half-mile freestyle; BRITISH EMPIRE and COMMONWEALTH GAMES: 1958 (3 gold medals).
Ilsa: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1960 4th (400m freestyle); WORLD RECORDS: included 800m, 880yd freestyle; BRITISH EMPIRE and COMMONWEALTH GAMES: 1958 (1 gold medal).
John and Ilsa Konrads were born in Riga, Latvia during World War II. With their parents, they fled to Germany in 1944 where John contracted polio in a refugee camp near Stuttgart. The family moved to Australia in 1949 and encouraged the children to swim as therapy for John’s polio. When coach Don Talbot took them over, he found two remarkable young swimmers, coach-able and willing to work as no one before them.
Ten years after migrating to Australia, this most remarkable of all brother and sister swimming acts began to break world records as the celebrated Konrads Kids, the Prince and Princess of freestyle swimming. Thirteen year old Ilsa set the Konrads’ first world records in the 800m and 880 yd. freestyle on January 9, 1958 under coach Don Talbot. Fifteen year old John set the same 800m and half mile records for men two days later, then followed with 200m, furlough, 400m and quarter mile records during the next week. After this week, the swim world, still in shock from Australian dominance in the 1956 Olympics, wondered how anyone would ever catch up. During the next two years, between January 1958 and February 1960, the Konrads Kids established 37 world records.
At the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, Wales, the Konrads were the first brother-sister act ever to win gold medals, three for John and one for Ilsa. John Konrads won the 1500m freestyle at the Rome Olympics in 1960 and Ilsa was a disappointing 4th behind Hall of Famers Chris Von Saltza and Dawn Fraser.
The Konrads stay at the top was brief but so brilliant it has never quite been equaled. They were the first of the Kiddy Corps that has made the world believe in the ability of very young swimmers to work harder than adult athletes had thought possible. They set multi-world records at an age when most of us are encouraging the mediocrity of our children with “What can you expect — she’s only 13?” The Konrads and their coach, Don Talbot, didn’t know “kids can’t swim that fast.”
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.
