Amy Van Dyken

INTRODUCTION:


Amy Van Dyken is a swimmer training for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. There is a very good chance that she will make the team and will then go on for the gold. Amy is a very supportive athlete; always cheering her team mates on.

SWIMMING LIFE:


She is the fastest woman swimmer ever, with times of twenty-one point seventy seven in the fifty yard race and twenty-five point zero three in the fifty meter freestyle. Her best strokes are freestyle and butterfly. She plans to swim the 100 free and the 100 butterfly at the Olympics, if she makes the team. Amy trains with the US national Resident Team in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her coach is Jonty Skinner. He says that "Amy's a tiger. She's a great, aggressive racer, and she's very conscientious. " Amy's only problem is that she has asthma. This slows her down some days to the extent that she can not even get into the water, but mostly she can cope with it. Swimmers believe Amy to be a team leader. Not only is she an exceptional swimmer, but she is a very kind person who is always happy and looking for the good in everything.

PERSONAL & FAMILY LIFE:


Amy was born to Don Van Dyken and Becky Van Dyken on February sixteenth, nineteen hundred seventy-three. Her family is very athletic. Her dad played baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals. She has a very successful mother, who is her best friend, supporter, and role model. Also, both her sixteen year old sister Katie Van Dyken, and her fifteen year old brother David Van Dyken are great swimmers like her. Katie has broken her sister's swimming records at her high school (Amy's old high school), Cheery Creek High School in Colorado, where they live. Amy attended Colorado State University, and plans to go back there to complete her degree in human development after the Olympics Amy married her high school boy friend, Alan McDaniel. Married in October, they now live together in Colorado Springs.

AMY AT THE OLYMPICS


Amy Van Dyken did an extraordinary job at the Olympics! The beginning was rough, but it got much better. After her first event, in which she received 4th place, Amy collapsed on the cement because of cramps. Later in the Olympic games, however, she captured 4 gold medals. Two were from relays, the 4x100-m freestyle and the 4x100-m medley. The other two gold medals were individual; the 100-m butterfly and the 50-m freestyle. The winner of the 50-m freestyle receives the title "the world's fastest woman" in water.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WORLD'S FASTEST WOMAN, AMY VAN DYKEN!!!



Go to other pages about Amy
Profile on an Olympic Athlete
Amy's athsma
Amy's swimming records

 "Underdogs' Day"-Amy and other Olympians at the games An article from Time Magazine


Bibliography
Katie O'Hara and Maggie Holshouser, Ligon Middle School, Raleigh NC