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Home > Olympics > Bronze Medalists > Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller
The Olympic Games, or Olympics, is an international multi-sport event taking place every four years which comprises of summer and winter games. Though the first ancient games were held in 776 B.C, the modern games started from 1896.The unity of the 5 continents is shown on the Olympic flag by five colorful intertwined rings of red, blue, green, yellow, and black, created by Baron Pierre de Coubertin to represent at least one color of the participating country’s national flag.
Johnny Weissmuller, one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920’s, was born on the 2nd of June 1904 in Rotterdam, Holland, and he died on the 20th of January 1984. His family left Rotterdam in 1905, and arrived in New York. He had won five Olympic Gold medals and one Bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven world records.
He joined the Stanton Park pool, where he won all the junior swim meets. At the age of twelve he earned a spot on the YMCA swim team. When Weissmuller left school, he worked as a bellhop and elevator operator at the Plaza Hotel in Chicago and trained for the Olympics with a swim coach at the Illinois Athletic Club, where he developed his revolutionary high-riding front crawl. He made his amateur debut on August 6, 1921, winning his first AAU, Amateur Athletic Union, race in the 50 yard freestyle.
On July 9, 1922, Weissmuller broke Duke Kahanamoku's world record in the 100 meters freestyle, swimming it in 58.6 seconds. He won the title with a Gold medal in that distance at the 1924 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France, beating Kahanamoku on February 24, 1924. He also won the 400 meters freestyle and the 4 by 200 meters relay for the Gold medal. As a member of the American water polo team, he won a Bronze medal. Four years later, at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, he won another two Olympic titles winning the Gold medal in the 100 and 400 meter freestyle events. Johnny Weissmuller never lost a race and retired from his amateur swimming career undefeated.
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