Shirley Babashoff

Early swimming career

Shirley Babashoff began swimming lessons around age eight at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California, alongside her brother Jack Babashoff, who also became an Olympic swimmer. At nine, she swam for the Buena Park Splashers with Jack, later moving to a club in El Monte, California under coach Don La Mont.

Around age 13 in 1970, she swam for a Phillips 66 team at Golden West College in Huntington Beach, coached by Ralph "Flip" Darr, under whom she set age group records. Schubert's long workouts improved her fly, back, and breaststroke skills and included managed weight training. By the 1972 Olympics, she was a top women's freestyler, and she continued training with the Nadadores and Schubert through the 1976 Olympics, leading the team to win the AAU Short Course Championships in April 1975.

1972 Summer Olympics

At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Babashoff won gold medals in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay and the 4x100-meter medley relay, and silver medals in the 100-meter and 200-meter individual freestyle events. She finished fourth in the 400-meter freestyle, missing a bronze medal by 0.48 seconds behind East German competitor Gudrun Wegner. In September 1974, she led the American women's team to a win over East Germany in Concord, California, tying her own world record in the 200-meter freestyle at 2:02.94, winning the 400-meter freestyle, and anchoring a world-record-setting 4x100-meter freestyle relay.

Personal life

Babashoff was one of four children of Jack Babashoff, a machinist, and Vera Slivkoff, a housewife; her father had been a swimming instructor in Hawaii and wanted his children to become Olympians. Both parents were second-generation Spiritual Christians from Russia. After the 1976 Olympics, the media occasionally called her "Surly Shirley" and described her as a "sore loser" for publicly accusing East German swimmers of drug cheating. She was later proven correct: most East German athletes used performance-enhancing drugs, as substantiated by investigators in the PBS documentary "Secrets of the Dead: Doping for Gold."

By 1991, after German reunification, media reports including the New York Times vindicated her accusations, with headlines such as "Coaches Confirm That Steroids Fueled East Germany's Success in Swimming." It is estimated she was denied three gold medals due to East German cheating. In the mid- to late-1990s, when German agencies confirmed a state-run doping program, the American Olympic committee considered giving upgrade medals to affected Americans, but IOC member Jacques Rogge disapproved, citing the passage of time.

The 1976 American 4x100-meter women's medley relay team received appropriate medal recognition, but no medal reallocations occurred. After the Montreal Olympics, Babashoff enrolled at UCLA in autumn 1976, majoring in business, left after a few years, and retired from swimming in January 1977. She had an endorsement contract with Arena from 1977 through around 1980, requiring 56 days of work per year as a representative, and did a few television appearances.

She later coached swimming primarily around Los Angeles and for a period coached the Korean Women's National Swim Team in Pyongyang for the 1988 Olympics.