Donna Elizabeth de Varona (born April 26, 1947,
San Diego, CaliforniaSan Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
) is a former
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
swimmer of Mexican and Irish descent.
Swimming career
De Varona was the youngest swimmer to compete at the
1960 Summer OlympicsThe 1960 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held from August 25 to September 11, 1960 in Rome, Italy...
. In the following
OlympicsThe 1964 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Tokyo, Japan in 1964. Tokyo had been awarded with the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this honor was subsequently passed to Helsinki because of Japan's...
, she won
gold medalA gold medal is typically the medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture...
s in the 400-meter individual medley and as a member of the 400-meter freestyle relay. In her career, she set 18 swimming records after retiring shortly after the 1964 Olympics. Despite her Olympic medals, she was unable to obtain a swimming scholarship to attend college as they did not exist for women at that time. She trained under
George HainesGeorge Frederick Haines was a swimmer and swimming coach who coached at the Santa Clara Swim Club, Stanford University and UCLA. He also coached for seven U.S. Olympic swim teams...
at the
Santa Clara Swim ClubThe Santa Clara Swim Club is a renowned swimming club and team based in Santa Clara, California. Founded in 1951 by George Haines, the team's coach until 1974, the club has many notable alumni, including Donna de Varona, Pablo Morales, Don Schollander, Mark Spitz, Chris von Saltza, Lynn Burke,...
.
ABC Sports career
In 1965, aged 18, she signed a contract with
ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, which made her one of the first female sportscasters in television history. She served as Late night host of both the
1984 Winter OlympicsThe 1984 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XIV Olympic Winter Games, was a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated from 8–19 February 1984 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Other candidate cities were Sapporo, Japan; and Gothenburg, Sweden...
and the
1984 Summer OlympicsThe 1984 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1984...
. She anchored the Los Angeles Olympics with
Jim LampleyJames "Jim" Lampley is an American sportscaster, news anchor, movie producer, and restaurant owner. Lampley has anchored a record 14 Olympic Games U.S. television broadcasts, most recently the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China....
and served as both a play-by-play announcer for
Synchronized SwimmingSynchronized swImming is a hybrid form of swimming, dance and gymnastics, consisting of swimmers performing a synchronized routine of elaborate moves in the water, accompanied by music....
and as a color analyst for
SwimmingSwimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...
in the women's category.
She also served as a correspondent for the
1988 Winter OlympicsThe 1988 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XV Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event celebrated in and around Calgary, Alberta, Canada from 13 to 28 February 1988. The host was selected in 1981 after having beat Falun, Sweden and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy...
in
CalgaryCalgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
. In addition, she was a political activist in favor of the
Title IXTitle IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a United States law, enacted on June 23, 1972, that amended Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 2002 it was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, in honor of its principal author Congresswoman Mink, but is most...
entitlement program. She helped to establish the
Women's Sports FoundationThe Women's Sports Foundation "is an educational nonprofit organization founded in 1974 by tennis legend Billie Jean King." Its stated mission statement is "To advance the lives of girls and women through sports and physical activity."...
, where she served as their first president from 1976-84.
Personal life
De Varona graduated in 1986 graduate from
UCLAThe University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
.
Her younger sister is actress/director
Joanna KernsJoanna Kerns is an American actress and director best known for her role as Maggie Seaver on the family situation comedy Growing Pains from 1985-1992.-Early life:...
, who played Maggie Seaver on the ABC sitcom
Growing PainsGrowing Pains is an American television sitcom about an affluent family, residing in Huntington, New York, with a working mother and a stay-at-home psychiatrist father raising three children together, which aired on ABC from September 24, 1985 to April 25, 1992.-Synopsis:The show's premise is based...
.
External links