Swimming · 1988 · Seoul, South Korea
Evans' World Record That Lasted Decades
A 17-year-old American with an unorthodox stroke wins three gold medals at the Seoul Olympics, setting a 400m freestyle world record that survived for nearly eighteen years.
4:03.85 (world record)
400m freestyle time
3
Golds, Seoul 1988
~18 years
Record stood
Janet Evans, competing at her first Olympics at 17, swam with a distinctive, high-turnover stroke that broke from conventional technique but produced results coaches could not argue with. At the 1988 Seoul Games she won three individual gold medals: the 400m freestyle, 800m freestyle, and 400m individual medley.
Her 400m freestyle swim, timed at 4:03.85, broke her own existing world record and proved remarkably durable, standing as the fastest time ever swum in the event for almost eighteen years before finally being beaten in 2006. Few individual world records in Olympic swimming have lasted that long.
Evans became one of the faces of American swimming through the late 1980s and 1990s, adding a further gold and two silvers at the 1992 Barcelona Games, and remains one of the most recognisable American female swimmers of her generation, still active decades later as an advocate for water safety.
Watch the Moment
