Ann Elizabeth Curtis biography

 Ann Elizabeth Curtis biography

Ann Elizabeth Curtis , (Ann Elizabeth Curtis Cuneo), American swimmer (born March 6, 1926, San Francisco, Calif.—died June 26, 2012, San Rafael, Calif.), dominated her sport through the Forties, with three Olympic medals and 5 world data, in addition to 34 nationwide titles and 56 American data. She started swimming at age 9 and two years later gained the freestyle race for ladies underneath 16 on the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championships. She briefly switched (1939) to aquatic ballet however quickly found that she most well-liked competing. Curtis started setting U.S. freestyle data in 1943 and was chosen by the Pacific Association of the AAU because the 12 months’s excellent feminine athlete of the West Coast. She set her first world file, within the 880-yd freestyle, in 1944. At that 12 months’s AAU championships she positioned first within the 100-, 400-, 800-, and 1,500-m freestyle competitions. Her achievements earned her the 1944 Sullivan Award, making her the primary lady and the primary swimmer to win that prestigious novice athletics honour, and he or she was named by the Associated Press as the feminine athlete of the 12 months. The 1944 Olympic Games didn't happen, nonetheless, due to World War II. As a end result, Curtis needed to wait till 1948 for her Olympic debut. During the interim she continued to swim competitively and attended the University of California, Berkeley, the place she met her husband (from 1949), Gordon Cuneo. At the 1948 London Olympics she medaled in all three of her occasions (feminine opponents had been restricted to a few): a gold within the 400-m freestyle, a silver within the 100-m freestyle, and a gold for the U.S. 4 × 100-m freestyle, having introduced the staff from behind together with her anchor leg. After she retired from novice competitors, Curtis and her husband opened (1959) the Ann Curtis School of Swimming in California. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1966 and elected to the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1985.