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.
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’.
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.