Swimming · 1988 · Seoul, South Korea
Evans' World Record That Lasted Decades
A 17-year-old American with a stroke no coach would have taught her wins three golds in Seoul, and sets a 400m freestyle record that lasts nearly eighteen years.
4:03.85 (world record)
400m freestyle time
3
Golds, Seoul 1988
~18 years
Record stood
Janet Evans swam at her first Olympics at 17, using a distinctive, high-turnover stroke that broke from conventional technique and produced results coaches could not argue with. At the 1988 Seoul Games she won three individual gold medals: the 400m freestyle, the 800m freestyle and the 400m individual medley.
The 400m freestyle swim, timed at 4:03.85, broke her own existing world record and then proved remarkably difficult to shift, standing as the fastest time ever swum in the event for almost eighteen years before it was finally beaten in 2006. Very few individual world records in Olympic swimming last that long.
Evans was one of the faces of American swimming through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, adding a further gold and two silvers at the 1992 Barcelona Games, and has stayed visible decades later as an advocate for water safety.
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