Biography
She made her international debut at the 1987 European Aquatics Championships at the age of 13, coming fourth in the 200 m backstroke and fifth in the 100 m backstroke.
At the 1988 Summer Olympics she won silver medal in the 100 m backstroke and became Olympic champion in the 200 m backstroke. At the age of 14 years and 41 days she became the youngest-ever female Olympic champion in swimming. This youth record was broken in 1992 by Kyoko Iwasaki of Japan, who won a gold medal in the 200 meter breaststroke at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games at the age of 14 years and six days.
At the 1989 European Aquatics Championships she competed in three events adding the 400 m medley to the 100 m and 200 m backstroke, winning silver medal in all three events.
In 1991 she competed at the World Championships winning the gold medal in both backstroke events. Few months later at the European Championships she won three gold medals and set World records in the 100 m and 200 m backstroke event.
At the 1992 Summer Olympics she won three individual gold medals, becoming the only female athlete at the Games to do so. The next year at the European Championships she competed in the 200 m butterfly for the first time and went on to win four gold medals also winning the 400 m medley and the 100 m and 200 m backstroke.
In 1994 she announced that she would retire after the World Championships. After getting a disappointing fifth place in the 100 m backstroke and coming second in the 200 m backstroke she decided to compete for two more years, citing the two defeats as the main reason.
She competed at the 1995 European Aquatics Championships where she won the last two of her nine European titles in the 400 m medley and the 200 m backstroke event. For the first time, she competed in the 4x100 m medley relay where one of her teammates was a young Ágnes Kovács, a future Olympic champion. They came second and Egerszegi has named this silver medal as 'the one that made her the happiest'. She decided not to compete in the 100 m backstroke even though her time of 1:00.93 clocked during the 4x100 m relay final was better than Mette Jacobsen's winning time of 1:02.46 by almost two seconds.
At the 1996 Summer Olympics she won her first and only Olympic bronze medal in the 400 m medley and went on to win the 200 m backstroke becoming the second of only three swimmers in Olympic history (Dawn Fraser and Michael Phelps being the other two) to win gold for the same event at three successive Olympics (200 m backstroke: 1988, 1992, 1996). Between 1988 and 1996 she won 5 Olympic gold medals, which was a record for a swimmer for individual gold medal wins. This record has since been broken by Michael Phelps, who has to date won 11 individual gold medals. Egerszegi announced her retirement from swimming soon after the Olympic games, at the age of only 22.
Her nickname was "Egér" ("Mouse"), a play on her surname, because of her youthfulness and physical size.
She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2001. She was named Hungarian Sportswoman of the Year on a record-breaking seven occasions (1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1996) and Female World Swimmer of the Year three times.
Read more about this topic: Krisztina Egerszegi
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