Fred Schmidt
Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Full name | Frederick Weber Schmidt | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Nickname | "Fred" | |||||||||||||||||||||||
National team | United States | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Born | Evanston, Illinois | October 23, 1943|||||||||||||||||||||||
Height | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 185 lb (84 kg) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport | Swimming | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Strokes | Butterfly | |||||||||||||||||||||||
College team | Indiana University | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Frederick Weber Schmidt (born October 23, 1943) is an American former competition swimmer, Olympic champion, and former world record-holder.
He began swimming competitively at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois. He was part of one of the greatest high school swim teams ever, in 1961. The team won the Illinois high school championship, and various team members held every high school national record at the time. The New Trier High School team placed third in the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championships that year behind the Yale and Indiana University teams. He then joined coach Doc Counsilman's Indiana Hoosiers swimming and diving team at Indiana University.
At the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, he received a gold medal by swimming the butterfly leg for the winning U.S. team in the men's 4×100-meter medley relay, setting a new world record of 3:58.4 with teammates Thompson Mann (backstroke), Bill Craig (breaststroke), and Steve Clark (freestyle).[1] He also received a bronze medal for his third-place finish in the men's 200-meter butterfly, clocking a time of 2:09.3.
He held the world record in 100-meter butterfly (58.6 seconds) from August 20, 1961 to April 24, 1962.
He later entered the U.S. Navy, became a SEAL, and participated in the recovery of several capsules in NASA's manned space flight program.
See also
- List of Indiana University (Bloomington) people
- List of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)
- World record progression 100 metres butterfly
- World record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay
References
- ^ "1964 Summer Olympics – Tokyo, Japan – Swimming" – databaseOlympics.com (Retrieved on April 29, 2008)
External links
- Fred Schmidt – Olympic athlete profile at Sports-Reference.com
- 1943 births
- Living people
- American male butterfly swimmers
- Former world record holders in swimming
- Indiana Hoosiers swimmers
- Olympic bronze medalists for the United States in swimming
- Olympic gold medalists for the United States in swimming
- Olympic swimmers of the United States
- Sportspeople from Evanston, Illinois
- Swimmers at the 1963 Pan American Games
- Swimmers at the 1964 Summer Olympics
- Medalists at the 1964 Summer Olympics
- Pan American Games silver medalists