Bill Mulliken, a once little-known US college swimmer who outpaced national champions and the then-world-record holder in the 200m breaststroke to win gold in the 1960 Olympic Games, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 74.
He died after having a stroke, his wife, Lorna Filippini-Mulliken, said.
Mulliken was a student at Miami University in Ohio who had won the 200m breaststroke at the Pan-American Games in 1959 when he went to Rome for the summer Games. He was ranked 17th in the event, well below stars like Yoshihiko Osaki of Japan, Georgi Prokopenko of the Soviet Union and Australian Terry Gathercole, who held the world record in the event.
Even his father held little hope, Mulliken told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004.
“My dad had made this comment to me: ‘It really would be good if you could beat one Russian,’” Mulliken told the newspaper.
Mulliken beat Prokopenko in the semi-finals, setting an Olympic record at 2 minutes, 37.2 seconds. He went on to face the heavily favored Osaki in the final.
“We all kind of assumed that Osaki was going to rule the day,” Mulliken said. “Coming off the third turn, headed home, I realized I could not only beat the guy, but I could probably break the world record.”
He beat Osaki by 0.6 seconds with a time of 2 minutes, 37.4 seconds, short of the world record. He was the first American swimmer to win the event since Joe Verdeur won at the 1948 Games in London.
Other American gold medalists that year included the sprinter Wilma Rudolph and boxer Cassius Clay (the future Muhammad Ali).
William Danforth Mulliken was born Aug. 27, 1939, in Urbana, Illinois. He graduated from Miami in 1961 and received a law degree from Harvard.
His marriage to Julia Neavolls ended in divorce.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters, Cynthia Lazzara and Julia DeNapoli, and a son, John, from his first marriage; a sister, Sallie Olsen; a brother, John; and six grandchildren.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with