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1976
The claim: Born in Fort Wayne. Matthew Haynes Vogel was born on 3 June 1957 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, began competitive swimming here for coach Glenn Hummer, racing out of the Huntington YMCA and in the quarry where the national long distance championships were held each summer, and graduated from Snider High School before swimming at the University of Tennessee. He is, on the News-Sentinel history project's count, one of seven people Fort Wayne has sent to the Olympic Games, and the only one of the seven to win two gold medals.
Montreal: He very nearly did not get the chance. At the 1976 Olympic trials Vogel finished third in the 100-meter butterfly, behind Joe Bottom and Gary Hall, barely on the team. In Montreal, swimming with his head shaved and racing only the seventh long-course 100 butterfly of his career, he beat the field on 21 July 1976 in 54.35 seconds. The next day he swam the butterfly leg of the 4x100-meter medley relay, and the American team won in a world record 3:42.22 that stood until 1982. Two days, two gold medals, one world record: the International Swimming Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 1996, calls it a remarkable performance, and the University of Tennessee records that he became the first Tennessee athlete to win two Olympic golds.
The line he stands in: Vogel returned to Tennessee and swam on its 1978 NCAA championship team, adding an NCAA title in the 100-yard butterfly, then coached swimming for more than forty years. In the Fort Wayne order he is the middle champion: Sharon Wichman had won the city's first Olympic gold in 1968, Vogel doubled the feat in 1976, and when Lloy Ball won gold in 2008 the local count still stood at only three Allen County gold medalists. A swimmer who barely qualified became the most decorated Olympian the city has produced, a sentence the record supports in full.
Sources:
- International Swimming Hall of Fame, Matt Vogel, Honor Swimmer 1996: the Fort Wayne start under Glenn Hummer, the trials third place, the two Montreal golds and the world record.
- Olympedia, Matt Vogel: born 3 June 1957 in Fort Wayne; the 1976 results.
- University of Tennessee Athletics, Olympic tradition: the 54.35 and the 3:42.22 relay record.
- News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne history project, 1970-1979 chapter: seven Fort Wayne Olympians, Vogel's two golds, the Snider graduation.