Penny Heyns
Former South African coach Cecil Colwin published an interview with Penny in the January edition of Swimnews magazine.
AN INTERVIEW WITH PENNY HEYNS
Cecil M. Colwin
"I didn't grow up with a dream about Olympic gold," says Penny Heyns, Olympic and breaststroke gold medallist.
"It's interesting that different people have asked me if I had dreamt about winning at the Olympics. But, the answer is `no,' because in South Africa we were so isolated all those years, I never thought about the Olympic Games.
"Even in , when I knew there was a chance we would go, I swam that season thinking `Oh, well! I'll just do the best I can, and if South Africa is invited to participate, and I make the team, I'll go! But even Barcelona wasn't the wonderful, overwhelming experience, that it should have been"
However, despite Penny's lack of an Olympic dream, her life portents were always connected subtly with gold and water.
For instance, the gold in her two Olympic medals could have been mined in the gold-mining town of Springs, where she was born. (Springs is only a few miles east of Johannesburg, the centre of the world's richest gold fields.)
And, when Penny was a
Penny Heyns, South African swimming star, is born.
Penelope Heyns, was born on the 8th of November in Springs, Transvaal. Her parents later moved to the Natal South Coast. She attended Doon Heights Primary and then later Amanzimtoti High. She excelled in both academics and in athletics. At the age of 13 she became the swim team captain at school and this is when her interest in swimming grew. In she was the youngest member of the South African Olympic team at the Barcelona Games. While she did not win any medals, she did attract the attention. She was offered an athletic scholarship from the University of Nebraska, were she later earned her Degree in Psychology. She was also a member of the South African squad at the Commonwealth Games, where she won a bronze medal in the m breaststroke event. Heyns continued her swimming career and was asked to represent the USA in the Olympic games but she decided instead to represent her native South Africans in the Olympic games in Atlanta. She won both the m and m breaststroke event and this made her the only woman in the history of the Olympic games to do so. The achievement also marked her as South Africa's first post-apart
The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver
Penelope Heyns ( - ) Awarded for:
Outstanding and unparalleled achievement in the field of swimming.
Profile of Penelope Heyns
Penelope ‘Penny’ Heyns was born in in Springs. In , Penny was the youngest member of South Africa’s Olympic team to Barcelona. In that year, Penny became the only woman in the history of the Olympic Games to win both the m and m breaststroke events.
In , Penny broke a total of four individual world records in one event, on two separate occasions.
In that same year, she broke eleven new world records within three months. Both these performance records are achievements unparalleled in the history of swimming.
To date, Penny has broken 14 world records, which places her in the same category as other swimming icons such as Mark Spitz, Lenny Krazelburg and Ian Thorpe.
Penny Heyns’s achievements crown her as arguably the best breaststroke swimmer ever. It is an undisputed fact that she is the greatest female breaststroke swimmer of all time.
The last gold medal won by South Africa prior to its boycott due to apartheid was won by Joan Harrison, in the women’s metre backstroke. Almost 44 years later to the day, Penny Heyns succeed her compatriot, winning the breaststroke and, two days later, the breaststroke, also bettering the world record in the heats of the This made her the first person to ever achieve the breaststroke double at the same Games (later also achieved by Domenico Fioravanti and Kosuke Kitajima), and the first South African since Charles Winslow to win two Olympic gold medals. Heyns could not reproduce this feat at the Worlds, placing out of the medals, and blamed this on her coach Jan Birdman having left for Canada, although she joined him for the next season. This proved fruitful, as she would be named World Swimmer of the Year for the second time (after ). Not only did she win three silvers at the World Short Course Championships and two golds at the Pan Pacific Championships, she bettered a world record eleven times. Between 17 July and 26 September, she bettered (and held) the world record in the 50 m (short-course (1) and long-course (1)), m (short-course (2) and long-course (3)) and m (long cour
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