Franziska van Almsick (born 5 April 1978 in East Berlin, Germany) is a German swimmer. She won her first Olympic medals in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympic Games aged fourteen.
Her career begun at the SC Dynamo Berlin. She has the distinction of having the most career Olympic medals without ever winning a gold medal. Over her career, Van Almsick won ten Olympic medals, none of them gold. She ended her career at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004.
In 1993, she was named by Swimming World magazine as the Female World Swimmer of the Year. Her son Don Hugo was born on 7 January 2007.
Famous quotes containing the word van:
“His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking, Van gripped with splayed hands the brow of gravity, and moved to and fro, veering and sidestepping, opening his mouth the wrong way, and blinking in the odd bilboquet fashion peculiar to eyelids in his abnormal position. Even more extraordinary than the variety and velocity of the movements he made in imitation of animal hind legs was the effortlessness of his stance.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)