Wednesday, March 17, 2010
1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games: Tracy Caulkins wins gold in the 400 IM - Second place came in 9-seconds later!
Imagine racing the world for your country in the 400 IM finals at the Olympic Games, turning around at the 100-meter mark and seeing the rest of the world chasing you nearly 3-or-4 body lengths behind. I bet the "adrenaline blast" from that must have made her even stronger.
Tracy Caulkins was one of the greatest swimmers ever!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
Tracy Caulkins CRUSHED that swim. The single most dominant performance in pool I have ever seen. She was an absolutely astounding swimmer. The distaff Michael Phelps.
FYI, she lives in OZ now. Married Mark Stockwell, who came 2nd to Rowdy Gaines in the 100 free. (I still think he - Stockwell - was cheated.)
I think the greatest female swimmer of all time is that Australia girl who owned every record at one time. Can't remember her name. Shirley comes second.
Watch the Rowdy Gaines race in slo-mo, Rowdy Gaines reaction time is almost as fast as mine. ;-)
Gaines didn't cheat. He false-started and it wasn't called back. Stockwell was cheated by the officials.
I was there.
OK, Rowdy Gaines, did not false start according to the slo-mo video.
Can't tell you how many times I watched Tracy win Senior Nationals by 25 meters in this event. Used to sit on the side thinking... man... if she only tried. ;)
The best make everything look so effortless. Tracy was the best ever.
Australian Shane Gould...
But be careful -
Shirley Babashoff and Tracy Caulkins are absolute legends.
Both were robbed of their due fame, fortune and great press.
Happily Tracy was able to train on and compete for Gold at the 1984 LA Olympics.
Sorry, Shirley and Tracey are the giants of our sport but Shane Gould is is the greatest swimmer of all time; even better than Phelps and Spitz in regards to accomplishments. Maybe the two have the gold but they did not hold every WR at the same time.
Wiki -- At the 1972 Summer Olympics, in Munich, [Shane] Gould won three gold medals, setting a world record in each race. She also won a bronze and a silver medal.
She is the only person, male or female, to hold every world freestyle record from 100 m to 1500 m simultaneously, and the first female swimmer ever to win three Olympic gold medals in world record time. ..."
She also swims masters!
And one more thing: :-P
Many athletes have suffered career losses due to boycotted Olympic Games and drug cheating athletes...
Some great athletes were fortunate to have never had that career mishap and were able to fulfill their greatness.
As it should be for all.
I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you there Tony. One of my first blog posts was about who I consider the greatest female of all time, Ragnhild Hveger. You can read it here: http://www.floswimming.org/blogs/blogger/chris_desantis/1514-the-greatest-female-swimmer-of-all-time
I'll paraphrase for my comment. You want to talk about robbed? How about hitting your prime in 1938 and seeing it all waste away while countries blow each other up. She had records from the 100 up to the mile AND the 100 backstroke. She won the European Championship in 1938 in the 400 free by 18 seconds! Her world record in the 200 free lasted for 18 years only to be broken by one of the other all time greats, Dawn Fraser. Also, when you compare her to the men of her era she was much closer in time then the elite women are today. Case closed.
WOW! I gotta go read that article.
I gotta say, I love how that race was filmed. You not only see the competition, but get a real sense of the technique. Love it; thanks for posting, Tony!
Seems to be a bias here in favor of pool swimmers. If I had to name the greatest swimmer of all time, it'd be Lynne Cox: first channel crossing (Catalina) at 14; at 15, breaks the world record (both women's AND men's) for the English Channel; breaks both records again at 16; tons of other amazing efforts, including a 62 minute swim in the Strait of Magellan, temperature 42 degrees.
At the very least, she is the greatest cold water swimmer in history.
One thing we all can agree upon is that the best swimmer ever to grace this planet is.... a woman.
Agreed, my dad competed at that Olympics and the officials struck a deal with Gaines. He didn't false start....he cheated
Post a Comment