John Davies (swimmer)

John Davies (swimmer)

John G. Davies (born 17 May 1929 in Willoughby, New South Wales) was an Australian breaststroke swimmer of the 1940s and 1950s who won a gold medal in the 200m breaststroke at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. After retiring from swimming, he became a prominent lawyer in California, and after becoming a naturalized American, he was appointed a judge of the United States District Court by Ronald Reagan in 1986, and presided over the trial of the Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with assaulting Rodney King.

Growing up in Willoughby, Sydney, where his father was an accountant and his mother a nurse, Davies learnt to swim at the tidal pool in Northbridge, where he enjoyed competing against his friends. He and his brother spent their teenage years separated from their father, who joined the Royal Australian Air Force and was a Japanese prisoner of war for three years. Davies left Narrabeen High School in 1945 and worked for the Caltex oil company, who often granted him leave to compete at swimming competitions. He entered and won both breaststroke events at the 1946 New South Wales Championships held at Manly.

He began to train under Forbes Carlile in 1947 and won the 220yd breaststroke at the Australian Championships, as well as helping New South Wales to win the 3x110yd medley relay. He repeated these victories at the 1948 Australian Championships, earning selection for the 1948 Summer Olympics in London at the age of 19. In the lead up to the Games, he won two races in London. Davies came second in his heat and fourth in his semifinal with an Australian record 2m 44.8s to qualify for the final of the 200m breaststroke. Davies set a new Australian record in the final, recording a time of 2m 43.7s. Although his time was recorded by the timekeepers to be 0.2s faster than the bronze medallist R Sohl of the United States, the judges believed that Sohl had touched first and awarded him the bronze.

After the Games, Davies enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he trained under the guidance of Matt Mann. Without scholarship support available for swimmers in that era, he pursued a Political Science degree, while supporting himself by washing dishes and working at the International Student Centre. Mann also altered Davies's style, changing from the even-paced racing of Carlile to an early-attack oriented style of swimming. Davies managed a second placing at the 200yd breaststroke at the NCAA Championships in 1948, but failed to place in 1949 and 1950. In 1951 he won the 200m breaststroke at the US Championships and in 1952 won the 200yd breaststroke short course at the US Championships. The Australian Olympic Federation granted him an exemption from the Australian Championships and selected him for the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He trained with fellow team member John Marshall at Yale University under Robert Kiphuth while the rest of the Australian team trained in Townsville.

Davies arrived in Helsinki as the favourite after setting a 200yd breaststroke world record earlier in the year, but after a poor time trial a week before the Games, he was forced to restrict his training to under a kilometre per day and sleep for 20 hours daily. Davies was not the fastest qualifier in the heats, but broke the Olympic record in the semifinals to qualify fastest for the final. Swimming in his even paced style, Davies trailed by more than 2 seconds at the 100m mark, but overhauled his rivals, pipping the United States' Bowen Stassforth by 0.3s to set a new Olympic record time of 2m 34.4s.