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.
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