SwimmingWorldMagazine.com Rewind: 1974 World Swimmers of the Year

By Jason Marsteller

PHOENIX, Arizona, October 8. IN December’s issue, Swimming World Magazine will unveil this year’s World Swimmers of the Year. Additionally, the American, African, European and Pacific Rim Region Swimmers of the Year will be featured in our End of the Year edition.

With that being said, SwimmingWorldMagazine.com Rewind will take a look back at previous winners throughout the next two months in anticipation of this year’s celebration.

Today’s Rewind checks out the 1974 winners: Ulrike Tauber and Tim Shaw.

Here is an excerpt of the story written in the December issue of that year:

Ulrike Tauber, a 16-year-old swimmer from the German Democratic Republic and Tim Shaw, 16, from the Long Beach Swim Club, California, were voted the World Swimmers of 1974 by the editors of Swimming World Magazine.

Miss Tauber shocked spectators at the European Championships in Vienna, Austria this past August by shattering the world records in both the 200 and 400 meter individual medleys. Tauber was an unknown last year and was not able to make the National Team for the World Championships in Belgrade. However, this year she won both the 200 individual medley (2:18.97) and the 400 individual medley (4:52.42) in world record times in Vienna and placed second in both the 100 and 200 backstrokes. Miss Tauber was a member of the DDR team that competed against the United States in Concord, August 31 and September 1, and set two records in the individual medley events.

Tim Shaw set three world marks and four American marks in the freestyle events at the U.S. National Championships and a week later won the same three events, in the USA-DDR dual meet. Shaw set world marks in the 200 freestyle (1:51.66), 400 freestyle (3:54.69) and the 1500 freestyle (15:31.75) in addition to setting an American record of 8:16.80 in the 800 freestyle. The 200 meter record was formerly held by Mark Spitz and the three world freestyle records makes Shaw only the second swimmer in history to hold all three distance freestyle records.

For the complete Swimming World Magazine article on the 1974 World Swimmers of the Year, click here.

Premium online subscribers can view the entire 1974 December edition of the magazine, as well as any other edition of the magazine back to 1960. For more information on a premium subscription, please click here.

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