I read Jenny Thompson conparing herself to other famous swimmers and track people. She forgot to include Shirley Babashoff, another swimmer who won 8 medals in two olympics, Probably to many swimmers today Babashoff and most swimmers prior to 1980 are not known to them. I guess that most of the 1950's swimmers and some of the early 1960's swimmers are not known to me either. But she did mention Mary T Meagher and Tracey Caulkins that came in the generation after Shirley. Oh,well. Maybe, many of us in masters might look up information on the olympics in swimming prior to 1968. And the master swimmers that are younger need to learn about those those olympic swimmers prior to 1984.
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Former Member
I started a thread awhile back called 'The social history of swimming' which invited memories to be shared of experiences from previous eras of swimming. There is still many older swimmers out there with anecdotes to share; pure gold that could just disappear. Think of what a contentious era we are in right now with the tech suit stuff etc., which may be incomprehensible to future swimmers without the (prolific!) writings on the subject surviving. I am sure there were equally burning subjects 'back in the day'; these older swimmers aren't getting any younger and many of them are shy of the internet, so if any of you can elicit from them such memories, please share them.
I started a thread awhile back called 'The social history of swimming' which invited memories to be shared of experiences from previous eras of swimming. There is still many older swimmers out there with anecdotes to share; pure gold that could just disappear. Think of what a contentious era we are in right now with the tech suit stuff etc., which may be incomprehensible to future swimmers without the (prolific!) writings on the subject surviving. I am sure there were equally burning subjects 'back in the day'; these older swimmers aren't getting any younger and many of them are shy of the internet, so if any of you can elicit from them such memories, please share them.
