Sports > Swimming Archives

Gertrude Ederle

Olympic champion, world record holder and the first woman to swim across the English Channel.

Mercedes Gleitze

On 6 April 1928, this pioneering female swimmer became the first person to swim the 8 mile Straits of Gibraltar.

Joyce Cooper

Joyce Cooper remains to this day one of the most decorated female swimmers Britain has ever produced.

On the 9 September 1875, in rough open water Harriet Elphinstone-Dick swam seven miles from Shoreham Harbour to Brighton’s West Pier. She completed the distance in a record making 2 hours and 45 minutes. It was regarded as one of the greatest swimming feats of the time.

Katerina Nēhua

In March 1931 Nēhua entered an open sea endurance competition at Rushcutters Bay, Sydney. Later in the month at the city’s Balmoral Baths she broke the world record with a swim of 72 hours 9 minutes. She went on to break her world record in May 1931 at Brisbane’s municipal baths, swimming for 72 hours 21 minutes.

Eve Marion Rimmer

Eve Rimmer was one of New Zealand’s greatest paraplegic athletes, winning 32 medals – including 22 gold medals – for athletics and swimming at international sporting events. A household name during the late 1960s and 1970s, she was also an outspoken advocate for the rights of the disabled in sport and society.

Annette Kellerman

In a 1915 press interview Annette Kellerman described the principal motivation at the heart of her successful career as performer, movie star, athlete and role model for the emerging 20th century modern woman: ‘Swimming for women is more than physical, it can engender self-confidence, and in the art and science of swimming, a kind of equality, even superiority to that of men. My chief pride and pleasure has been the knowledge that my work has stimulated an interest in swimming as a woman’s sport’.

Yana Klochkova

Nicknamed “The Goldfish,” Yana Oleksandrivna Klochkova is a Ukrainian swimmer, who won five Olympic medals (four gold, one silver) at the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games in the 200 meter individual medley and the 400 meter individual medley at the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics and the 800 meter freestyle at the 2000 Summer Olympics.