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Donald Arthur Schollander (born April 30, 1946) is an American former competition swimmer, five-time Olympic champion, and former world record-holder in four events. He won a total of five gold medals and one silver medal at the 1964 and 1968 Summer Olympics. With four gold medals, he was the most successful athlete at the 1964 Olympics.[1]
Early career
Schollander was born in Charlotte, North Carolina,[2] and learned competitive swimming from his uncle, Newt Perry, who ran a swimming school in Florida.[3] As a boy, Schollander moved with his family to Lake Oswego, Oregon.[4] Although his first sporting passion was football, he was too small to compete in high school football.[5] Instead, he joined Lake Oswego High School's swim team, and in 1960, helped lead the team to an Oregon state swimming championship as a freshman.[5][6]
Olympics
As a teenager in 1962, Schollander moved to Santa Clara, California to train under legendary swim coach George Haines of the Santa Clara Swim Club.[5] Two years later at the age of 18, he won three freestyle events at the AAU national championships.[5] He made the U.S. Olympic team in two individual events and two relays. Months later, he won four gold medals and set three world records at the 1964 Summer Olympics, at the time the most medals won by an American since Jesse Owens in 1936.[5] His success helped earn him the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States, and the AP Athlete of the Year, defeating runner-up Johnny Unitas by a wide margin.[5] He was also named ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year.
In his biography, Schollander attributes a temporary decline in his endurance, technique, and speed after the 1964 Olympics as a result of time away from training while he recovered from mononucleosis, the shorter workout distances he swam at Yale as opposed to the distances he swam in high school at Santa Clara under George Haines, the absence of top competitors competing against him while he swam at Yale, and a short bout with Asian Flu. With the help of George Haines's coaching in Santa Clara in the summer of 1965, Schollander believed he recovered much of his prior speed and endurance.[7]
In 1971, he published his first book, Deep Water (with Duke Savage) chronicling his swimming, his teammates and coaches, and the behind-the-scenes politics of international swimming, especially the Olympic Games. He followed this book in 1974 with Inside Swimming (with Joel H. Cohen).
Schollander and his wife Cheryl reside in Lake Oswego, Oregon, where he runs Schollander Development, a real estate development company. His gold medals are on display to the public at a Bank of America branch location in downtown Lake Oswego.[4] Schollander has three children, Jeb, Kyle, and Katie.[12]
