Shirley Babashoff

Shirley Babashoff

Shirley Babashoff is an American Olympic champion swimmer. In her extraordinary career, she set six world records and thirty-seven national records and earned a total of eight individual Olympic medals. She won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay in both the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, and four silver medals in the 4 x 100 meter medley relay and the 200-meter, 400-meter and 800-meter freestyle. She also won the 1975 world championship in both the 200-meter and 400-meter freestyle. Prior to the 1990s, she was the most successful U.S. female Olympian and, in her prime, was widely considered to be the greatest female swimmer on the planet. Babashoff is perhaps best remembered for swimming the anchor leg on the gold-medal winning 4×100-meter freestyle relay team in its victory over the steroid-plagued 1976 East German women, in what is widely acknowledged to be the single greatest race in the history of women’s swimming. She was inducted to the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an “Honor Swimmer” in 1982. Babashoff lives in Fountain Valley, California, where she has been a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service for nearly thirty years.