Sharon Wichman: sixteen years old, and Fort Wayne's first Olympic gold

1968

The claim: Raised and schooled in Fort Wayne, and printed with her birthplace standing where it stands. Sharon Lynn Wichman was born on 13 May 1952 in Detroit, Michigan, and Fort Wayne makes no claim on the birth. The claim is everything after it: she was raised in Fort Wayne, began swimming at eleven at the city's Club Olympia, one of only four Olympic-size pools in Indiana, and was a junior at R. Nelson Snider High School, from which she graduated in 1970, when she went to the Mexico City Olympics. Her coach in the breaststroke was Stefan Hunyadfi, a specialist the International Swimming Hall of Fame calls a legend in the stroke.

Mexico City: On 24 October 1968, at sixteen, Wichman won the 200-meter breaststroke in an Olympic record 2 minutes 44.4 seconds, the first American woman ever to win that event at an Olympic Games, and added a bronze medal in the 100-meter breaststroke. The Allen County record names it plainly: Fort Wayne's first Olympic gold medal. The Hall of Fame's account keeps the human frame around the record: her father's work had taken the family to Mexico City in 1966, away from her coach, and she arrived back there for the Games a scared and homesick sixteen year old, and won anyway.

The choice after: Wichman swam at the U.S. Nationals in 1971 and then declined to defend her title in 1972, saying she wanted the normal life of a teenager. She married in 1973 and settled in Churubusco, a short drive from the city whose pool had made her. The International Swimming Hall of Fame inducted her as an Honor Swimmer in 1991. In the order of this city's Olympic gold, hers stands first, eight years before Vogel and forty before Ball, and it was won by a schoolgirl who had trained for it in Fort Wayne water.

Sources:

1. Allen County Genealogical Society, W surnames, Sharon Lynn Wichman: the Detroit birth, the Snider graduation of 1970, the Club Olympia practice, the 2:44.4 record.
2. International Swimming Hall of Fame, Sharon Wichman, Honor Swimmer 1991: the first American woman to win the Olympic 200 breaststroke, the 100 breaststroke bronze, the Club Olympia start at eleven.
3. Allen County Genealogical Society, 1960-1969 timeline: Fort Wayne's first Olympic gold medal, 24 October 1968.
4. The Daily Banner, Greencastle, 27 December 1968 (Hoosier State Chronicles): the sixteen-year-old Snider junior's year in Indiana sport.