George Breen

George Thomas Breen (born July 19, 1935) is a retired freestyle swimmer from the United States, who has won four Olympic medals (one silver, three bronze) in his career. Breen twice broke the world record in the 1500 m freestyle. Breen trained for his long course 1500 m world records in a 20 yard pool. He began swimming at seventeen, after focusing on soccer as a youth. In his first time trial as a freshman at Cortland State, he swam six minutes and 30 seconds for 440 yds. He started late, came on fast, and became the best. Breen started swimming at least ten years later than most of today's champions. Yet he was still swimming, or swimming again, twenty years later as a Masters national Champion.

Probably his most impressive effort was his 1500 m freestyle world record (long course) on May 3, 1956 at the 1956 U.S. AAU Indoor Championship at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he not only lowered the world record by 13.1 seconds, but finished one minute and 18 seconds ahead of Frank Brunell, himself a many-time U.S. National Champion. No one has ever finished so far ahead of the second man in the 75-year history of the U.S. Nationals.

In five years, from 1956 to 1960, he won 22 U.S. National Championships, set six world records and made two Olympic Teams for the United States, captaining the 1960 U.S. Team which won the title back from the Australians who had won it all in 1956. Coached by the famous Doc Counsilman Breen's thrashing-rolling-shoulder-roll and two-beat kick was an important step in the evolution of modern freestyle swimming although so unorthodox that many top coaches of the time remarked after each of his world records. In 1975 he was inducted as an honoree in the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Breen coached the Men's Swimming Team at the University of Pennsylvania from the late 1960s until 1982, and served as a coach for U.S. Swimming.

References

* [http://www.databaseolympics.com/players/playerpage.htm?ilkid=BREENGEO01 databaseOlympics]