Swimming
Deardurff swam for the Cincinnati Marlins, a team funded by Charles Keating. One of the team coaches was Paul Bergen, who is reported to have said that swimmers need 12,000 miles of experience in order to compete in the Olympics.
At the age of 15, Deardurff represented the United States at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. She won a gold medal as a member of the first-place U.S. team in the women's 4x100-meter medley relay, swimming the butterfly leg of the relay. Deardurff and her relay teammates Melissa Belote, Cathy Carr and Sandy Neilson set a new world record of 4:20.75 in the event final. Individually, she also competed in the women's 100-meter butterfly, finishing fourth in the event final with a time of 1:03.95. She also received a silver medal in the women's 4x100-meter medley relay at the first World Aquatics Championships in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1973.
Read more about this topic: Deena Deardurff
Famous quotes containing the word swimming:
“Whenever parents become overly invested in a particular skill or accomplishment, a child’s fear of failure multiplies. This is why some children refuse to get into the pool for a swimming lesson, or turn their back on Daddy’s favorite sport.”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)
“Loosed betwixt eye and lid, the swimming beams
Of memory, blind school of cuttlefish,
Rise to the air, plunge to the cold streams....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The swimming hole is still in use. It has the same mudbank. It is still impossible to dress without carrying mud home in one’s inner garments. As an engineer I could devise improvements for that swimming hole. But I doubt if the decrease in mother’s grief at the homecoming of muddy boys would compensate the inherent joys of getting muddy.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)