Black Swimming History Month: Remembering Chris Silva

By Bruce Wigo.

Who was Chris Silva? For starters, he was was an All-American sprinter for UCLA (1982-1984). He was the first African American to qualify for a U.S. Olympic swimming team, in 1984, the first to hold a U.S. record, as a member of a 400-meter freestyle relay team, and he the first to represent the U.S. in international competition, winning a silver medal in the 100m freestyle at the World University Games in 1983.

Silva grew up in Menlo Park, Ca.where he became a swimming and water polo star at Menlo Atherton High School. The only African American on the team and in virtually every competition. Ron Ballatore, his coach at UCLA thought being the only African American bothered him. “He put a lot of pressure on himself,” said Ballatore and this pressure might have prevented him from achieving his dream as an Olympian.

And although missed qualifying for the 1984 Olympic team in the 100 freestyle by 0.4 seconds, he wanted to use his success in swimming to encourage other minorities to enter white-dominated sports.

“There is a need for a role model in competitive swimming to show that blacks can succeed if given an opportunity,” he said.

In a 1990 interview with South Florida Sun Sentinel reporter Sharon Robb, he described how Princess Diana had made a fuss over him after the FISU Games in Edmonton and had invited him to lunch. “He was the first black swimmer she had ever seen,” wrote Robb.

“That kind of notoriety was fine,” he told Robb. “It’s too bad that I was the first because why wasn’t it done years ago? That’s the sad part of it. the joy part is that finally it’s been done. There are no more firsts. Now it’s for other people to fill in and be the mass.”

He became something of a celebrity after that. According to Robb he dressed in Ralph Lauren shirts, dated celebrities, was a regular at Lakers games and gave private swimming lessons to the likes of Magic Johnson, SNL’s Dan Aykroyd, Vidal Sasoon and Peter “Robocop” Weller. He was living life as fast as he swam and was, it appeared to some, was heading in the wrong direction.

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Photo Courtesy: ISHOF newspaper Archive/Joe Raedle South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Then in the early summer of 1990 Dr. Sam Freas, President of the International Swimming Hall of Fame at the time, reached out to him with a proposition to head up ISHOF’s minority swimming program in Fort Lauderdale. Freas had been Silva’s coach during the University Games in 1983 and believed that this would be beneficial for both Chris and swimming. In partnership with Alamo Rent-A-Car, it was one of the first major efforts to create diversity in American swimming and it laid the blueprint for efforts years later by USA Swimming and other organizations to promote water safety and swimming in minority communities.

Tragically, a month after moving to Fort Lauderdale, Chris Silva died in an car crash less than a mile form the Swimming Hall of Fame.

To see a short interview with Silva at the Hall of Fame with Hall of Famer Mary Wayte and Paul Sundland, click here.

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