Cool Sports Players: 06/10/11

Friday, June 10, 2011

Kosuke Kitajima

Kosuke Kitajima (北島康介 Kitajima Kōsuke?, born September 22, 1982 in Tokyo) is a Japanese multiple Olympic gold medalist breaststroke swimmer. He won gold medals for the men's 100 m and 200 m breaststroke at both the Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Olympics

Kosuke Kitajima

Rebecca Adlington

Rebecca "Becky" Adlington, OBE, (born 17 February 1989) is a British freestyle swimmer. She won two gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in the 400 m and 800 m, breaking the 19 year-old world record of Janet Evans in the 800 m final. Adlington is Britain's first Olympic swimming champion since 1988, the first British swimmer to win two Olympic gold medals since 1908 and Great Britain's most successful Olympic swimmer in 100 years.

Rebecca Adlington

Katie Hoff

Kathryn "Katie" Elise Hoff (born June 3, 1989 in Palo Alto, California) is an American swimmer. Hoff is strongest in the 200 and 400 meter individual medley, though she is a very capable swimmer in many events, ranging from the four 200 meter events to the 800 meter freestyle. She competed in the 2004 Summer Olympics and 2008 Summer Olympics, in which she captured a silver and two bronze medals.

Katie Hoff

Britta Steffen

Britta Steffen (born 16 November 1983 in Schwedt, Germany) is a German swimmer who specializes in freestyle, who is the current holder of the world record in women's 50 and 100 metre freestyle.

In 1999 Steffen won six titles at the European junior championships, and won a medal as a member of Germany's freestyle relay team at the Summer Olympics 2000. In 2004, she asked to swim the 4×100 m relay. But after the Olympics, she took one year off swimming and concentrated on her studies, which were not finished.

Britta Steffen

Michael Phelps

Michael Fred Phelps (born June 30, 1985) is an American swimmer who has, overall, won 16 Olympic medals—six gold and two bronze at Athens in 2004, and eight gold at Beijing in 2008, becoming the most successful athlete at both of these Olympic Games editions. In doing so he has twice equaled the record eight medals of any type at a single Olympics achieved by Soviet gymnast Alexander Dityatin at the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. His five golds in individual events tied the single Games record set by Eric Heiden in the 1980 Winter Olympics and equaled by Vitaly Scherbo at the 1992 Summer Games. Phelps holds the record for the most gold medals won in a single Olympics, his eight at the 2008 Beijing Games surpassed American swimmer Mark Spitz's seven-gold performance at Munich in 1972. Phelps' Olympic medal total is second only to the 18 Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina won over three Olympics, including nine gold.

Michael Phelps

Stephanie Rice