History of Swimming in the Olympics
he sport’s International Federation FINA was formed during the London 1908 Olympic Games, when a pool was used for the first time in Olympic competition and rules were standardised.
Meet the Female Coaches
As an individual sport, it is difficult to measure the number of female coaches, as each swimmer has their own personal coach who often are not part of an Olympic Team Staff. Below are some stats and bio’s of female coaches who are part of National Teams.
We will add to this as the Games progress and we discover more coaches
Team USA have selected 11 coaches for both the Pool and Open Water – 2 of these coaches are female coaches
Teri McKeever – USA
Regarded as one of the most accomplished swimming mentors in the United States, if not the world, Teri McKeever completed her 29th season overseeing the University of California women’s swimming & diving program in 2020-21.
Over the course of her career with the Golden Bears, she has guided Cal to four NCAA and five Pac-12 team championships. This past year, the Bears placed fourth at the NCAA Championships to extend their streak of top-5 finishes to 15 years in a row – the longest run in the country. In addition, Cal captured the Pac-12 team title behind 12 wins in 18 swimming events. As a result, McKeever earned her ninth Pac-12 Coach of the Year honor.
In 2012, McKeever served as head coach of the U.S. Olympic women’s swim team in London, a unit that included six past, present and future Golden Bears who produced 13 medals for Team USA. In addition, McKeever was an assistant Olympic coach in both 2004 and ’08, has been head coach of the U.S. team at the Pac Pacific Championships twice and was head coach of the U.S. squad at the 2012 World Short-Course Championships. She is also a seven-time assistant for the United States at the World Championships.
Teri is an assistant coach on Team USA Swim Team at Tokyo.
Catherine Kase – USA
Catherine (Vogt) Kase, a former top-flight distance swimmer who has coached at both the collegiate and national levels, is in her 12th year at USC and in her third season as the Trojans’ associate head coach.
Kase also coached at the 2012 London Olympics, serving as an assistant on the Tunisian swim staff, working with Mellouli.
Mellouli won gold in the Marathon 10K and bronze in the 1500m free while Anderson also won a medal, taking silver in the Marathon 10K (seconds out first). Anderson earned her spot at the Olympics with a first-place finish at the FINA Olympic Marathon Swim Qualifier in Setubal, Portugal.
Catherine is Team USA Open Water coach in Tokyo.
Mel Marshall – GB
Mel Marshall is best known as the Super Coach behind the greatest sprint swimmer of all time – Adam Peaty.
Mel’s extraordinary international career as a British swimmer started over two decades ago, at the 1995 European Youth Olympics in Bath, where she achieved four gold medals aged only 13. In 2000, her journey with us at Loughborough began when she came here to study Applied Sport Science, and has remained part of our fabric ever since.
Melanie’s list of sporting accolades is significant. She is a double Olympian, five-time Olympic finalist, and the second most decorated female at the Commonwealth Games – taking home no less than six medals at the 2006 Melbourne Games alone.
Melanie has coached Adam Peaty to unprecedented success; he holds two world records in both 50 and 100m breaststroke and is one of just three British swimmers to have won gold at all four major national events – the Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth Games.
It is no surprise, then, that Melanie was named British Swim Coach of the Year three times in a row, and in 2014 she was named International Swim Coach of the Year.
Showing the real strength of her character as a coach, in a recent BBC interview she explained that she subscribes to the motto ‘leaders eat last’. Melanie puts her athletes and their performance first, and the results speak entirely for themselves.
