March 30, 2020
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Ironically it was a judge who overrode the time-keepers to deny Sydney boy John Davies of an Olympic bronze medal in the 200m breaststroke at the 1948 Games in London. Davies first won a NSW swimming championship in 1946 at the old Manly Baths – destroyed by the storms of 1974 – and was discovered and mentored by the legendary coach Forbes Carlile after winning the Australian Championship in Adelaide in 1947. Davies was part of the original “guinea pigs” of Australia’s genius sports scientist Professor Frank Cotton, under Carlile’s swimming spell. Between them the combination of Carl ...
March 29, 2020
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John Davies , a legendary Australian Olympic champion, passed away at the age of 90 on Wednesday, March 25th in Pasadena, California. During his career, Davies was one of the early pioneers in butterfly-breaststroke, which is now the modern-day butterfly. In addition to a 1952 Olympic gold medal, while competing at the University of Michigan from 1948-1952, Davies earned 4 AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) and 2 NCAA individual breaststroke titles. At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, representing Australia, Davies participated in the 200-meter breaststroke, yet had adopted the experimental “bu ...
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Early pioneer of the buttterfly-breaststroke, John Davies passes.