THE U.S. OLYMPIC TRIALS:
DONNA DE VARONA AND THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF WOMEN’S SWIMMING BY BRUCE WIGO
A
s usual, the USA Swimming Olympic Trials in Omaha provided stories of triumph and tragedy that will forever be preserved for future generations in the International Swimming Hall of Fame Museum. But there was one moment that linked the past with the present and future of swimming like no other. It came when Donna de Varona presented Olympic qualification medals to Katie Grimes, the youngest member of the 2021 Olympic swimming team, and three-time Olympian Katie Ledecky. When Donna de Varona was 13 years old, she had been the youngest member of the 1960 Olympic team. After the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, she was regarded by many as the Greatest of All Time of women’s swimming because of her versatility. But it is what Donna has done after her competitive career ended that has helped make it possible for the two Katies to achieve their Olympic dreams in 2021. Within the current ISHOF building, there is a small exhibit that includes a magazine cover photo that omnisciently predicted that Don Schollander and Donna de Varona would be the stars of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games months before the Games were held. In the new ISHOF, this little-remembered Saturday Evening Post cover will have a much more prominent position—for if every picture tells a story, this one has had more impact on the history of women’s and Olympic swimming than any other—with the possible exception of a photo of Annette Kellerman wearing a one-piece bathing suit in 1907! In this photo, the two California teenagers could be mistaken for fraternal twins. They both swam for the Santa Clara Swim Club and trained under the legendary George Haines. They both attended Santa Clara High School, where Haines was also the coach of the boys’ team, but where there was no team for the girls. While Schollander
continued his legendary swimming career after the Games at Yale, there were no scholarships or NCAA swimming programs at the time for Donna to pursue. So like most young female swimmers of her era, she retired with an unbelievable résumé for a girl of 17. She had won 37 individual national championship medals and three AAU national high-point awards. She had set American or world records or recorded the world’s fastest times in three of the four individual strokes (backstroke, butterfly and freestyle) and had broken the world record in her specialty, the 400 meter IM, six times—the first coming in 1960 when the IM was not an event on the Olympic program. She was the world’s best all-round swimmer of her day. “Her day” was a five-year period that extended from the Rome Olympics, when she qualified as a member of the 4x100 free relay as a 13-yearold, until her retirement after the Tokyo Games, where she won two gold medals—when there were only six individual events for women. Her biggest award year was 1964 when she was voted America’s Outstanding Woman Athlete, Outstanding American Female Swimmer and San Francisco’s Outstanding Woman of the Year... and she also received the Mademoiselle Award, National Academy of Sports Award and many others in many languages. During her reign, she was arguably the most photographed woman athlete in the world, appearing on the covers of Life, The Saturday Evening Post, twice on Sports Illustrated and on dozens of swimming publications. GREATEST OF ALL TIME The internet is loaded with forums and sites debating the question of who is the GOAT—or Greatest of All Time—in every realm of human endeavor from athletes to zoologists. And every field has historians, journalists and social influencers who have established criteria, statistics and, more recently, artificial intelligence algorithms to back up their selection.
>> PICTURED ABOVE: Donna de Varona (right) with Katie Ledecky (center) and Katie Grimes (left) at the recent U.S. Olympic Trials
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AUGUST 2021
SWIMMINGWORLD.COM
[PHOTO COURTESY MIKE LEWIS/OLAVISTA PHOTOGRAPHY/USA SWIMMING]
INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING HALL OF FAME
