SWIMMING has been contested at every Olympics since 1896 and women first competed in 1912 when there were only two events - the 100 metres freestyle and the 4 x 100 metres relay. It was thought at the time that women were not strong enough to swim distances further than that!
Strangely, the Americans did not send a women's team to Stockholm in 1912 because they believed they should remain fully clothed at all times! However, the British girls wore rather daring one piece woolen costumes that finished above the knee and exposed bare arms and shoulders ... daring stuff indeed!
John Jarvis was Britain's first Olympic gold medalist when he won the 1000 metres freestyle in 1900. He was also the first Briton to win two golds as he also won the 4000 freestyle at the same Games.
Lucy Morton in 1924 was the first British girl to win an individual gold medal when she won the 200 metres breaststroke in 1924 although the British girls of Isabelle Moore, Jennie Fletcher, Annie Spiers and Annie Steer won the 4 x 100 freestyle relay in 1912, to make them the first British girls to win gold.
The most successful British swimmer is Henry Taylor with five medals between 1908 and 1920 (three gold and two bonze medals). He also won three medals at the 1906 unofficial Intercalated Games to give him a total of eight swimming medals.
Rebecca Adlington with two gold and two bronze medals between 2008 and 2012 and is the most successful female British Olympian in the pool.
Britain's Gold Medallists:
ADLINGTON, Rebecca
Born: 17 February 1989, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England
Olympics competed in: 2 (2008, 2012)
Olympic medals:
2008 Gold - Swimming (400 metres freestyle)
2008 Gold - Swimming (800 metres freestyle)
2012 Bronze - Swimming (400 metres freestyle)
2012 Bronze - Swimming (800 metres freestyle)
Becky Adlington is the only British girl to win two Olympic swimming gold medals and at Beijing in 2008 she became the first British swimmer since Henry Taylor one hundred years earlier to win two gold medals at one Games.
She started swimming at the age of four and started competing competitively at the age of nine. Initially in relay events but a year later took to also competing in individual races.
She won the British championship in 2006 and was also second in the 800 metres freestyle at the European Championships. But the following year Becky was very disappointed, and upset, at not reaching the 800 metres final at the World Championships but 2008 the heralded a whole new beginning for Adlington.
She first set a British record for the 800 metres and then a new European record at the World Short Course Championships at Manchester. Not surprisingly she went to Beijing as one of the favourites for the 800 metres, if not for the 400 metres. But she came hone with gold medals in both events.
Her first gold was in the least fancied 400 metres. Whilst she qualified as the second fastest in the heats, she trailed in fifth place coming into the final turn, but an amazing burst of pace saw her overtake race favourite Katie Hoff in the last few metres to win by 7/100ths of a second. Fellow Briton Jo Jackson won the bronze medal. Adlington became Britain's first female swimming gold medallist since Anita Lonsbrough 48 years earlier.
Adlington now had a great chance of the double with her favourite 800 metres still to come and a few days later she not only won gold by six seconds from Italy's Alessia Filippi but she broke swimming's oldest world record when she knocked more than two seconds off the mark set by Janet Evans of the USA nearly 20 years earlier, with a time of 8 minutes 14.10 seconds. Adlington was six months old when Evans set the old mark! Becky's record stood for nearly five years until lowered by Katie Ledecky at the 2013 World Championships.
Like many of the British gold medallists in Beijing, celebrity status followed and her swimming took a bit of a back seat but she was back in 2010 winning the 400 metres freestyle gold at the European Championships, despite a poor seventh place in the 800 metres. She won the 400 and 800 metres gold at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi that year. She also won bronze in the 200 metres and 4 x 200 metres freestyle relay in Delhi.
She won her first long course World Championship gold in Shanghai in 2011 when she won the 800 metres title. She came second in the 400 metres.
Becky carried a lot of responsibility on her shoulders at London 2012 but she could not emulate her feats of four years earlier and could only win bronze in her two events.
She was always struggling to make up ground in the 400 metres but was in contention for a while in the 800 although it never looked like she would overtake the eventual winner, 15-year-old Katie Ledecky of the USA, she even slipped out of the silver medal position in the closing stages and had to settle for bronze.
Between 2008-11 Rebecca Adlington won six ASA titles at 200, 400 and 800 metres freestyle. She was awarded the OBE in 1989, aged just 20. In February 2013 she announced her retirement from international competition.
After retiring, she set up her "Rebecca Adlington Swim Stars" programme, aimed at encouraging British youngsters to take up swimming. She was also in demand as an after dinner speaker and as a television personality, even appearing in ITV's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here .
At the civic welcome home and reception afforded to her after her 2008 Olympic success she was presented with a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes by the Mayor of Mansfield, Tony Egginton, after Becky had announce publicly her love of the shoes!
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DERBYSHIRE, John Henry 'Rob'
Born: 29 November 1878, Manchester, England
Died: 25 November 1938, Camden, London, England
Olympics competed in: 3 (1908, 1912)
Olympic medals
1908 Gold - Swimming (4 x 200 metres freestyle relay)
Rob Derbyshire's father, John senior, was the manager of the Osborne Street Baths in Manchester when Rob was born. He later became Superintendent of Manchester City Council's Baths and Wash Houses Department. Hardly surprising, Rob took to the water at a very early age and won his first swimming prize at the age of six.
He went on to become one of the most outstanding water polo players and freestyle swimmers at the turn of the 20th century. He played water polo for the Osborne Club that won the national title seven times between 1894 and 1901.
At the age of 14 Rob won the Yorkshire Ornamental Swimming Championship in which the swimmers had to perform a series of stunts in the water and many historians feel this was the first synchronized swimming competition.
Rob won the first of his nine England caps in 1896 at the age of 17. He went on to win 10 ASA titles between 1898 and 1904, including a record six in the 100 yards freestyle.
In 1902 Rob swam the 100 yards freestyle in the magical one minute mark and in September 1907 he became the first Briton to break the one minute barrier when he finished third in a race at Victoria Baths, Manchester. The race was won in a world record 55.4 seconds by Charles Daniels of the USA.
Rob's first Olympics were at the unofficial 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens and he won a bronze medal as part of the 4 x 250 metres freestyle relay team. But two years later in London he won a gold medal with team-mates Henry Taylor, Willie Foster and Paul Radmilovic in the 4 x 200 metres freestyle relay. He took part in a third Games in 1912 but failed to make the 100 metres freestyle final.
Rob co-founded the Old Trafford Swim Club after leaving Osborne in 1904 and then founded the Lime Grove Baths in Hammersmith, London, where he lived up to his death. In 1921, along with his wife Alice, they founded the famous Penguin Club in North London. It will come as little surprise to learn that Penguin won the national water polo title in 1926 and 1927 and Rob coached many swimmers to Olympic success at every Games from 1920 to 1936. Rob was coach to the 1928 British Olympic team and in 1936 had the honour of being manager of the British team.
Bob's wife Alice was equally well known in swimming circles and founded the Hammersmith Ladies Swimming Club in 1916 and was chaperone to the women's swimming team at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. She continued her association with the sport after Rob's death in 1938 and 'Auntie Alice' as she was affectionately known, lived until she was 94 and was the one-time President of the Southern Counties ASA.
Rob Derbyshire was held in such high esteem that a portrait of him was hung in the entrance hall of the offices of the ASA. He was elected into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2005.
Some sources credit Derbyshire as being a member of the 1900 gold medal winning water polo team but an article in The Times newspaper the day before the team set of for Paris clearly states that his place was taken by Thomas Coe.
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FLETCHER, Jennie Louise
Born: 19 March 1890, Leicester, England
Died: 17 January 1968, Teeswater, Bruce County, Ontario, Canada
Olympics competed in: 1 (1912)
Olympic medals:
1912 Gold - Swimming (4 x 100 metres freestyle relay)
1912 Bronze - Swimming (100 metres freestyle)
Jennie Fletcher was the first British woman to win an Olympic swimming medal when she came third in the inaugural women's 100 metres freestyle at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. She then became the first British woman to win two swimming medals when she won gold as part of the 4 x 100 metres freestyle relay team a couple of days later.
Fletcher was the first great female swimmer of the early part of the 20th century and like the top male swimmer of the day, John Jarvis, she was born in Leicester. The daughter of a fishmonger and one of 11 children she used to go training after work, which consisted of 12 hour days for six days a week as a cutter and machinist in a hosiery factory.
She won the Leicester Schools Championship at the age of 13, and when she was 17 she was invited to turn professional and join the famous Australian Annette Kellerman and her professional swimming show but her parents resisted and by the time the 1908 Olympics came around Jennie was at her peak and would probably have been favourite for the freestyle title but due to lack of entrants, the ladies swimming events were cancelled but she made up for it four years later in Stockholm with those two medals.
Fletcher was the English champion at 100 yards on six occasions and between 1906 and 1912 and in 1909 set the world record at the distance. She also played for the Leicester Swimming Club water polo team between.
Jennie married Scot Henry Hill Hyslop in 1917 and emigrated to Canada two years later where they became farmers and had six children. She died in her new adopted home at the age of 77 in 1968. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of fame in 1971. In 2004, a plaque in her memory was unveiled at the Cossington Street Baths in Leicester where she used to train.
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FOSTER, Willie
Born: 10 July 1890, Haslingden, Bacup, Lancashire, England
Died: 17 December 1963, Blackpool, Lancashire, England
Olympics competed in: 2 (1908, 1912)
Olympic medals:
1908 Gold - Swimming (4 x 200 metres freestyle relay)
1912 Bronze - Swimming (4 x 200 metres freestyle relay)
Willie Foster took part in the 400 metres, 1500 metres and 4 x 200 metres freestyle in both the 1908 and 1912 Olympics and while he failed to win an individual medal he won gold in the 1908 relay and bronze in 1912.
His gold medal came when he was just 18 years and 14 days old which made him the youngest ever British male Olympic gold medallist and he still held that record after the 2012 London Games.
Willie started swimming at the Maden Baths in Bacup where David Billington, winner of 10 national titles between 1901-05, also used to train. He represented Devon six times at water polo and was also a water polo referee. An all round sportsman he also played rugby for Exeter and was a member of the local rowing club.
Foster was a member of the Bacup Amateur Swimming club before he joined the famous Hyde Seals Club in Manchester. His sisters Ivy, Mary and Annie were all either schoolgirl or Borough champions at the turn of the century.
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GOODHEW, Duncan Alexander
Born: 27 May 1957, Marylebone, London
Olympics competed in: 2 (1976, 1980)
Olympic medals:
1980 Gold - Swimming (100 metres breaststroke)
1980 Bronze - Swimming (4 x 100 metres medley relay)
When he made his Olympic debut in 1976, Duncan Goodhew was just 19 years of age and still a student at the famous Millfield public school. He reached the 100 metres breaststroke final, having set an Olympic record in his heat, but finished seventh in a race won by John Hencken (USA) with team-mate David Wilkie in second place.
Two years later he won the silver medal in both the 100 and 200 metres breaststroke at the Commonwealth Games at Edmonton, Canada, with local hero Graham Smith taking gold in both events.
Goodhew then enjoyed time in the United States under coach David Haller and that was the spur to his greatest moment when he won the 100 metres breaststroke at the 1980 Moscow Olympics when he was also captain of the British swimming team. He also won a bronze medal as part of the GB team in the 4 x 100 metres medley relay.
After his swimming career, Goodhew became a media personality and did much to help promote his sport and also to give motivational talks.
Very distinguishable by his bald head, Goodhew did not shave it as many originally thought, but when he was 10 he fell out of a tree and as he said: " It was an auto-immune illness, probably triggered by hitting my lip against the tree root ", and he lost all his body hair. He also suffered from dyslexia.
The lack of hair and dyslexia made life tough for Goodhew at school but he stayed focused on his swimming and strode to one day be a champion which spurred him on through those tough times. He now passes that belief on to schoolchildren in a similar position as him with his inspirational speeches. He is also much sought after as an after-dinner speaker.
Goodhew came from a wealthy family of hotel owners and Duncan himself opened a restaurant in Kent with two of his bothers. He was honoured with the MBE for his services to sport in 1981 and in 1988 he was the co-creator of Swimathlon which is the world's largest fundraising swimming event and since its formation has raised over £40 million for charities.
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GRINHAM, Judith Brenda "Judy"
Born: 5 March 1939, Neasden, London, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1956)
Olympic medals: 1956 Gold - Swimming (100 metres backstroke)
Just two years after winning her first Middlesex county girls title in 1953, Judy Grinham made her Great Britain international debut against Germany at Aberdeen. She also won her first ASA title that year, 1955, when she won the ASA 110 yards backstroke title at the age of 16.
After retaining her ASA title in 1956 she was selected for that years Olympic squad in Melbourne and came home with the gold medal in the 100 metres backstroke as she became Britian's first female swimming gold medalist since Lucy Morton in 1924,
In her first heat in Melbourne, Judy set a new Olympic record and her time of 1 minute 12.9 seconds in the final was a new world record. Second placed, Carin Cone of the USA was also credited with the same time but Judy got the decision from the judges. Judy failed to win a second medal when the British 4 x 100 metres freestyle relay team finished last of eighth.
Two years after her Olympic triumph, Judy won the 110 yards backstroke in a world record time and was also in the England team that won the 4 x 110 yards medley relay, also in a world record time, at the Commonwealth Games in Cardiff. She also won a bronze as part of the 4 x 110 yards freestyle relay time.
That same year she won the 100 metres backstroke at the European championships in Budapest. She also won a silver and bronze in the medley and freestyle relays and an individual bronze in the 100 metres freestyle. Her success at Budapest meant she was the first woman to hold Olympic, Commonwealth and European title simultaneously. It would be 52 years before another British woman would win a European backstroke title when Gemma Spofforth and Elizabeth Simmonds won the 100 and 200 metres titles respectively at Budapest in 2010.
In 1959, on her 20th birthday, Judy announced that was retiring from competitive swimming because of the strain of continual training. Judy's married her first husband Patrick Rowley in 1960 and they remained married for 20 years. Rowley was a sports journalist and uniquely covered the two London Olympic Games of 1948 and 2012.
After swimming, Judy briefly turned to acting and appeared in the 1959 film Operation Sunshine that featured some well known British stars of the day like Donald Sinden, Dora Bryan, Ronald Shiner and Barbara Murray. She also had a spell as a journalist and spent a couple of years working for the Daily Express . However, in 1962 she returned to her sport, but this time as a coach.
She divorced her first husband and married Michael Roe in 1982 and they moved to Cornwall but after his death in 2010 she moved closer to home in Hertfordshire.
Judy who won five ASA freestyle and backstroke titles between 1955 and 1958. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1981 and in 2007 was eventually rewarded with an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.
In 1960 when she was in Rome covering the Olympics for the Daily Express she was asked by a fellow journalist: "What made you a world beater?" Judy replied: "Because I'm a rotten loser."
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HOLMAN, Fred
Born: March 1883, Dawlish, Devon, Englan
Died: 23 January 1913, Exeter, Devon, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals: 1908 Gold - Swimming (200 metres breaststroke)
A member of the Dawlish Swimming Club Fred Holman was coached at Exeter by Percy Matthews who encouraged him to switch from freestyle to breaststroke. And the work carried out by Percy enabled Fred to win the 200 metres breaststroke gold medal at the 1908 London Olympics. He set new Olympic records in his first heat and again in the semi-final, and his time of 3 minutes 09.20 seconds in the final was both a new Olympic and World record. The only other Briton to win the men's 200 metres breaststroke title is David Wilkie, the winner in 1976.
When he arrived home in his native Devon after his triumph in London, Fred was carried shoulder high by an army of fans from Exeter's Queen Street Railway Station to the town's Guildhall. He received a similarly arousing reception when he returned to his hometown of Dawlish.
"Our Freddie" as he was affectionately known in the Dawlish community, was one of ten children and the son of master baker and confectioner Tom Holman, who owned the Strand Café and Bakery. Fred initially followed his father's profession but then went on to become a trained chef and worked in local restaurants. Sadly, he died at the age of 29 after contracting typhoid from the Exeter swimming baths in January 1913.
Despite winning many titles as a junior, he never won a senior ASA title, but he received the ultimate accolade in 1988 when he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame - 80 years after winning his Olympic gold.
Fred's older brother Frank was a third class waiter on the Lusitania when it sank in 1915. He survived after spending around five hours in the water off the coast of Ireland. Whilst in the water he rescued a small boy and swam with him on his back for a while but sadly the boy died and Frank had to let him slip into the water.
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Born: 24 February 1872, Leicester, Leicestershire, England
Died: 9 May 1933, Holborn, London, England
Olympics competed in: 2 (1900, 1908)
Olympic medals:
1900 Gold - Swimming (1000 metres freestyle)
1900 Gold - Swimming (4000 metres freestyle)
1900 Gold - Water polo
A Leicester house painter, John Jarvis won three gold medals at the 1900 Paris Olympics, and in winning the 1000 and 4000 metres freestyle title, he did so in Olympic records - thanks partly to the downstream current of the River Seine. His third gold medal came in the water polo competition when he was co-opted onto the Manchester Osborne Club from his local Leicester swimming club specifically for the Games.
In addition, Jarvis won three medals at the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens, which are not recognised by the IOC as official medals. He obtained silver in the one mile freestyle, and bronze in 400 metres freestyle and 4 x 250 metres freestyle relay.
He competed in the London Olympics of 1908 in the 1500 metres freestyle, and after winning his heat he failed to get beyond the semi-final.
Jarvis won 24 ASA titles between 1897 and 1906 and in all he won more than 100 international races.
After he ended his swimming carer, Jarvis devoted himself to life saving and was the holder of the Royal Humane society's Medal for Saving Life.
He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1968, 36 years after his death.
[NB Some sources say Jarvis won the 100 metres freestyle gold in 1900 but the IOC do not record there being a 100 metres event in Paris]
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LONSBROUGH, Anita
Born: 10 August 1941, York, England
Olympics competed in: 2 (1960, 1964)
Olympic medals: 1960 Gold - Swimming (200 metres breaststroke)
Anita Lonsbrough was a true Yorkshire girl. Although she was born in York, it was Huddersfield that became her adopted home when she moved there at the age of 14. But that was not until she had lived in India, as her father was a Regimental sergeant major in the Coldstream Guards, and Harrogate on returning to the UK, before settling in Huddersfield.
Anita learned how to swim in India, and continued when she returned to Harrogate before taking it up competitively with the Huddersfield Borough Swimming Club.
In the four years between 1958 and 1962, Anita Lonsbrough won seven major championship gold medals plus an extra three silver and two bronze medals.
The highlight of those seven golds from the girl at Rome in 1960 when she won the Olympic 200 metres breaststroke title in a word record time of 2 minutes 49.5 seconds from the fancied West German Wiltrud Urselmann, who had taken Lonsbrough's world record off her two months before the Olympics.
Lonsbrough was one of only two British gold medallists in Rome, walker Don Thompson being the other. She would also be the last British girl to win swimming gold until Rebecca Adlington 48 years later.
Anita's impressive medal count started at the 1958 Commonwealth Games in Cardiff at the age of 17 when she won the 220 yards breaststroke and 4 x 110 yards medley relay gold medals.
She was dominant over 200 metres/220 yards from then until her retirement after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
The 1960 Olympic gold came was followed by a further three gold medals at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia, where she won both individual breaststroke events and the 440 yards individual medley. She also won the 200 metres breaststroke at that year's European Championships in Leipzig. The next British girl to win the same title was Kirsty Balfour in 2006.
Anita Lonsbrough was honoured to be the first woman to be flag bearer for Great Britain at the Olympics in 1964 and she, along with Mark Foster in 2008, is one of only two swimmers to have the honour.
The 1964 Olympics was her last major championship before retiring. Sadly, she failed to add to her medal collection, finishing seventh in the 400 metres individual, her only event at the Games.
Whilst she never won a medal in 1964 she did gain a husband because she met Hugh Porter, a Wolverhampton draughtsman and member of the British Olympic cycling team, on the flight to Tokyo. They got engaged in March the following year and three months later got married at Huddersfield Town Hall where she worked as a clerk in the Clerk in the treasury department.
The pair moved to Wolverhampton and Anita coached local swimmers before embarking on a career in journalism, like her husband, who later because a leading television cycling commentator.
In additional to her impressive list of major championship medals, she set four individual world records and won eight ASA title at freestyle, breaststroke and medley.
In 1962 she was the first woman to win the BBC Sports Personality of the year award and up to and including 2013 she is one of only two swimmers to win the award; Ian Black in 1958 being the other. She was awarded the MBE in 1963 and in 1983 was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
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MOORE, Isabella Mary
Born: 23 October 1894, Govan, Glasgow, Scotland
Died: 7 March 1975, Baltimore, USA
Olympics competed in: 1 (1912)
Olympic medals: 1912 Gold - Swimming (4 x 100 metres freestyle relay)
At the time of the 1912 Olympic, Belle Moore was at just over 17 and a half, was a swimming instructor when she won her gold medal as the lead swimmer in the successful 4 x 100 metres relay team at the 1912 Olympics, which made her the youngest British woman ever to win on Olympic gold medal. She was also the first Scottish woman to win an Olympic gold medal.
She also competed in the individual 100 metres freestyle event but failed to win a medal.
The second youngest of nine children, she only took to swimming as it was mandatory in Glasgow schools at the time, but her teacher thought she was so good that he encouraged her and she would often walk 2-3 miles a day to the pool to practice.
In 1919 Moore married George Cameron and moved to Dundalk, Maryland, USA, where she taught handicapped children to swim as she and her husband became a big part of the local community. She lived in Maryland until her death in 1975 and was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1989.
The week before she died, Belle gave a swimming demonstration to the YMCA at the age of 80. She just loved swimming, and teaching kids to swim.
Belle collapsed in a Maryland street in 1975 and was rushed to hospital and died a few days later. When the police returned her possessions to her family, there was a bag containing $10,000 - to this day, none of her family knows where it came from!
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MOORHOUSE, Adrian David
Born: 24 May 1964, Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Olympics competed in: 3 (1984, 1988, 1992)
Olympic medals: 1988 Gold - Swimming (100 metres breaststroke)
Swimming since the age of three, Bradford-born Adrian Moorhouse was inspired after watching David Wilkie winning the Olympic gold medal in 1976 and four years later he was selected for the England junior swimming team
He the joined the senior squad alongside Duncan Goodhew, the 1980 Olympic champion, and it was not long before Moorhouse became Britain's number one breaststroke swimmer, and at Split in 1981, at the age of 17, he won the 200 metres bronze medal at the European Championships.
The following year he won the 100 metres gold at the Commonwealth Games at Brisbane and in 1983 he won gold and silver in the 200 and 100 metres at the European Championships. However, he failed to capture a medal on his Olympic debut in 1984, finishing fourth in the 100 metres and was the ninth fastest qualifier in the 200 metres, just missing out on a place in the final, although he did win the 'B' Final.
Moorhouse went to Seoul in 1988 as one of the favourites for the 100 metres title having won gold in the 200 metres at the 1986 Commonwealth Games and gold in the 100 metres at both the 1985 and 1987 European Championships. He was also 'first' in the 1986 World Championship but was later disqualified for an illegal turn. He was also the first person to swim the 100 metres breaststroke (short course) in under one minute at the 1987 European Cup short-course Championships in Bonn, Germany.
He started 1988 by winning the US Indoor Championship (100 metres) and at Seoul he emulated Britain's two other great breaststroke swimmers, Wilkie and Goodhew, by taking gold. He was disappointing in the 200 metres which saw team-mate Nick Gillingham win the silver medal.
Moorhouse won further golds at the 1989 European Championships (100 metres) and 1990 Commonwealth Games (also 100 metres). He won a silver in the 100 metres at the 1991 World Championship but by the time the 1992 Olympics came around Moorhouse was 28 years of age. He took part in only one event, the 100 metres. He qualified for the final but finished last of eight with Gillingham just one place ahead of him.
His total medal haul from Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European Championships was eight golds, eight silvers and three bronze medals. He set just one world record when he broke Steve Lundquist's five year old record at Bonn, West Germany, in 1989 with a time of 1 minute 01.49 seconds for the 100 metres. He equalled his own record on two more occasions, the second being at Crystal Palace when he won his only National title in 1991
He retired from swimming shortly after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and became a very successful businessman as a Managemnt Consultant, and also part-time swimming commentator. He was the co-founder of Lane4 , a leading performance development consultancy. He was also an official Ambassador for Team GB at the 2012 Olympics.
Moorhose was awarded the MBE in 1987 and was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1999.
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Born: 23 February 1898, Knutsford, Cheshire, England
Died: 26 August 1980, Blackpool, Lancashire, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1924)
Olympic medals: 1924 Gold - Swimming (200 metres breaststroke)
Lucy Morton moved to Leyland, Lancashire when she was a youngster and eventually moved to her new home town, Blackpool, where she spent the rest of her life. Her father was a driver and chauffeur and at one time was the Blackpool Lord Mayor's attendant and Lucy and her family lived in the Town Hall for a while.
She began swimming at the age of 10 and five years later she won her first junior title. In 1916 she set inaugural world records for both the 150 yards backstroke and 200 yards breaststroke. Sadly for her, these two disciplines were not included in the women's swimming events at the 1920 Olympics so she had to sit them out and wait until Paris came around four years later.
But it was worth the wait because she became immortalized in the record books as the first British woman to win an individual Olympic swimming gold medal when she won the 200 metres breaststroke at Paris. In the final she beat Agnes Geraghty of the United States, who was the fastest of the seven qualifiers, and in doing so Lucy was the only non-American to win gold in the women's events in 1924.
Shortly after her Olympic triumph she married Henry Heaton - on her 29th birthday. Like Lucy, he was a post office clerk, who later became assistant head postmaster in Blackpool. Lucy also gave up competitive swimming to concentrate on coaching and teaching many schoolchildren to swim.
Lucy Morton died at the Victoria Hospital, Blackpool, in 1980 at the age of 82. In 1988 she was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. A Blue Plaque can be found mounted on the Blackpool Town Hall, where Lucy once lived, to commemorate her Olympic achievement.
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RADMILOVIC, Paul
For biography see Water Polo
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SPEIRS, Annie Coupe
Born: 14 July 1889, Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Died: 26 October 1926, Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1912)
Olympic medals: 1912 Gold - Swimming (4 x 100 metres freestyle relay)
Annie Speirs was one of the pioneering British female swimmers who represented their country for the first time at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm.
Having finished fifth in the 100 metres freestyle, she teamed up with Bella Moore, Irene Steer and Jennie Fletcher (who finished third in the individual 100 metres event) to capture the gold medal in a world record time in the 4 x 100 metres freestyle. The gold medal was won just one day after Annie's 23rd birthday.
Annie got married to Charles Coombe in 1922 but died in her native Liverpool in 1926 aged 37, and just three years after giving birth to her only son, Charles, junior.
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STEER, Irene
Born: 10 August 1889, Cardiff, Wales
Died: 18 April 1977, Cardiff, Wales
Olympics competed in: 1 (1912)
Olympic medals: 1912 Gold - Swimming (4 x 100 metres freestyle relay)
Irene Steer was the first Welsh woman to win an Olympic gold medal as part of the successful British 4 x 100 metres freestyle relay team at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. It would be 96 years before another Welsh girl won Olympic gold when Nicole Cook won cycling gold in Beijing in 2008. By an amazing coincidence, Cooke won her road race gold medal on what would have been Irene Steer's 119th birthday!
Steer also took part in the 100 matres freestyle event but was disqualified after winning her semi-final when a German swimmer complained that Steer had collided with her during a turn.
A member of the Cardiff Ladies Premier SC she used to do her early training in the lake at a nearby Roath Park. She stood just five feet two inches tall but went on to become the Welsh 100 yards champion every year from 1907 to 1913 and was undefeated over the distance in all that time. She won just one ASA title, the 100 yards in 1913 when she equalled the world record.
As a youngster Irene Steer would regularly go with her father, a wealthy local draper, to watch the Cardiff Rugby Club each week but she turned her attention to Cardiff City FC and she married a director and chairman of the club William Nicholson.
Irene Steer died in her home town of Cardiff in 1977 and was the last surviving member of the first British swimming gold medal team,
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TAYLOR, Henry
Born: 17 March 1885, Hollinwood, Oldham, Lancashire, England
Died: 28 February 1951, Oldham, Lancashire, England
Olympics competed in: 3 (1908, 1912, 1920)
Olympic medals:
1908 Gold - Swimming (400 metres freestyle)
1908 Gold - Swimming (1500 metres freestyle)
1908 Gold - Swimming (4 x 200 metres freestyle relay)
1912 Bronze - Swimming (4 x 200 metres freestyle relay)
1920 Bronze - Swimming (4 x 200 metres freestyle relay)
Taylor also competed in the 1906 Intercalated Games and won a gold medal in the One mile freestyle, a silver in the 400 metres freestyle and bronze in the 4 x 250 metres freestyle relay - for further details see The 1906 Olympics page
Including medals won at the 1906 Intercalated Games Henry Taylor's eight medals make him the most decorated Britain in Olympic history. Not bad for a man who stood just 5'5" tall.
Taylor was a cotton mill worker from Oldham, the world's biggest cotton spinning town in the word in the mid-to-late 19th century. He came from a poor background and could not afford to do his training in his local Chadderton Baths, except on "Dirty water day" when admission was cheaper. All his other training was done in either the Hollinwood Canal or the boating lake in Alexandra Park near to his home.
Orphaned at an early age, Henry was brought up by his older brother Bill who was also his trainer having spotted his talent when he won a race at Chadderton baths at the age of seven.
But that but him in good stead for the unofficial Intercalated Games of 1906 in Athens Henry Taylor won the first three of his eight medals in the open waters of Pireus.
He was the surprise winner of the gold medal in the one mile freestyle when he beat fellow Briton John Jarvis by more than one and a half minutes.
In the 1908 London Olympics, Taylor beat the renowned Australian swimmer Frank Beaurepaire to take the 400 metres gold medal in world record time, and when he overtook fellow Britain Tom Battersby in the last 200 metres to win the 1500 metres, Taylor did so in the first officially recognised world record for the distance. It would not be until Rebecca Adlington in 1908 than another Briton won two swimming gold medals at one Olympics.
Taylor added a third gold in 1908 as a member of the 4 x 200 metres freestyle relay team, and in yet another world record. His three golds at one Olympics was a British record until equalled by Chris Hoy in Beijing in 2008.
Taylor took part in the same three events in 1912 and 1920 but could not win any more gold medals, a bronze in each of the two relays being his best result.
Henry Taylor kept on swimming until he was 41 and during his career he won 35 trophies and over 300 medals, including Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) titles. He also played for the England water polo team beyond the age of 35. He made one unsuccessful attempt to swim the English channel. He won the 13-mile Morecambe Bay race eight times.
After he retired from swimming Taylor unsuccessfully ran the Nudger Inn at Dobcross in Saddleworth and then, due to financial difficulties, he was forced to sell off many of his trophies and medals.
Taylor served in the Royal Navy during World War One his ship HMS St Vincent was sunk during the famous Battle of Jutland, Henry and his colleagues spent two hours in the water.
There was no knighthood for Taylor for his Olympic exploits unlike the stars of today, but he was still a local hero. Sadly he died a bachelor and penniless in 1951. And it was with some irony that he ended up as an attendant at those Chadderton baths were he used to train on "Dirty water day."
He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1969. And many of his trophies were later gathered together and put on display at Chadderton Baths
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WILKIE, David
Born: 8 March 1954, Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)
Olympics competed in: 2 (1972, 1976)
Olympic medals:
1976 Gold - Swimming (200 metres breaststroke)
1972 Silver - Swimming (200 metres breaststroke)
1972 Silver - Swimming (100 metres breaststroke)
Born in Sri Lanka, where David Wilkie's Scottish-born father and uncle worked as import-export agents, the list of honours and titles won by Wilkie is as impressive as any British swimmer, or indeed British sportsperson.
He won gold medals at the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, European Championships and World Championships. In addition he won 10 ASA titles, nine Scottish titles and national titles in Canada and the United States.
When he won gold in 1976 he was the first British male Olympic gold medallist in the pool since Henry Taylor in 1908.
Having learned to swim at the Colombo Swimming Club he took up swimming seriously shortly after moving to Edinburgh when he was 11 after his parents sent him to boarding school to further his education. He developed the breaststroke at the Warrender Baths Club and at the age of 16 he was selected to represent Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh and won a bronze medal in the 100 metres breaststroke.
Two years later he was a member of the British team at the Munich Olympics and he won a silver medal in the 200 metres breaststroke, two seconds behind the American world record holder John Hencken.
After the 1972 Olympics, Wilkie moved to the United States to study mass communications law at the University of Miami, and also further his swimming career.
In 1976 Wilkie and Hencken were ready to renew their rivalry at the Munich Olympics. This time, Wilkie was better and more prepared for the challenge. He also went to the Games as the reigning 100 and 200 metres breaststroke world champion - but Hencken did not compete at the 1995 championships.
Hencken narrowly edged Wilkie to win the 100 metres in Munich, setting three world records on the way to the title. At the turn Wilkie was in sixth place but he came close to catching Hencken in the last few metres.
However, in the 200 metres race Wilkie got his revenge and won by over two seconds in a world record time of 2 minutes 15.11 seconds - it stood as a world record for six years. Wilkie's win was the only one of the 13 men's events at Munich not to be won by the Americans.
Wilkie is Scotland's greatest ever swimmer and certainly one of the best ever produced by Britain. He announced his retirement from swimming immediately after winning his 1976 gold medal. He returned to competitive swimming in 1980 to compete in Masters events in the States. In 1987 he applied to the Scottish ASA to be re-instated as an amateur at the age of 33, which was duly accepted and a month later he won the bronze medal in the Scottish Championship.
Wilkie later became a successful businessman and investor. Having sold a successful vitamin and health supplement company he became a director of Pet's Kitchen which provides pet food to supermarkets in 2009.
David Wilkie was certainly a pioneer because, at the 1970 Commonwealth Games, he became the first elite swimmer to wear a head cap and goggles while swimming. It was believed that he wore them to improve the streamline effect in the water. Wilkie himself reckons he wore the goggles because his eyes suffered a reaction from the chlorine in the water, and he wore the head cap to tuck in his long hair!
Wilkie was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1982 and the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. He was also honoured with the MBE in 1977.
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