Janet Evans
Janet Evans, born on August 28, 1971, in Placentia, California, is a celebrated American swimmer and an iconic figure in competitive swimming. Beginning her swimming journey at a very young age, she quickly rose through the ranks, setting national age-group records and demonstrating that size does not determine speed in the sport. Her unconventional swimming style, characterized by a unique "windmill" stroke, along with exceptional lung capacity, enabled her to outperform larger competitors throughout her career.
Evans gained significant recognition at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, where she won three gold medals and set world records in the 400-meter and 800-meter freestyle events. Over her career, she accumulated four Olympic gold medals, forty-five national titles, and multiple world records. After retiring from competitive swimming in 1996, she transitioned into motivational speaking and various business ventures while advocating for women's opportunities in sports.
Even after a long break from competitive swimming, Evans attempted a comeback at the 2012 Olympic Trials. Today, she remains active in the sports community, contributing to initiatives like the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games and continuing to inspire future generations of athletes.
Janet Evans
Swimmer
- Born: August 28, 1971
- Place of Birth: Fullerton, California
SPORT: Swimming
Early Life
Born on August 28, 1971, Janet Elizabeth Evans grew up in Placentia, California, where swimming was a popular sport. Evans began swimming almost before she could walk. As the youngest member of her family, she always wanted to do whatever her two older brothers did. When her mother took her sons to the local YMCA for swimming lessons, one-year-old Evans joined them. When she was only a toddler, Evans learned how to swim the four basic strokes—butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle—while swimming for Placentia’s local swim team. Her parents, Paul and Barbara Evans, never pressured their children to enter competitive swimming but were always supportive.
Early Competitive Career
Evans and her brothers joined the Fullerton Aquatic Sports Team when she was nine. The following year, she set a national age-group record in the 200-yard freestyle. At the time, most people believed that a swimmer’s speed depended on the swimmer’s size. Bigger swimmers swam faster than smaller swimmers. Evans proved otherwise. Evans, who was always one of the smallest people in her age group, never considered her size to be a detriment. In fact, when she swam the 1,650-yard freestyle in her first national swim meet, the United States Junior Olympics, she was a year younger than her competitors. She swam faster than her older and larger competitors by taking more strokes per lap.
Evans’s comparatively small size figured into her swimming style throughout her career—including the 1988 Olympic Games. She first thought about swimming in the Olympics when she was fourteen, after she had narrowly missed the 800-meter and 1,500-meter freestyle qualifying times for the 1986 US World Aquatics Championship team. Evans was becoming an Olympic hopeful, however, and she went on to swim those same events in the 1986 Goodwill Games in Moscow.
By 1986, Evans’s swimming played a major part in her family’s life. She swam under coach Bud McAllister and Don Wagner of the Fullerton Aquatic Sports Team, and Tom Milich of the El Dorado High School Swim Team. Her mother and father shared carpool duties, taking her to morning and afternoon practices on school days and weekends. Her swimming and school schedules required dedication and an early-to-bed, early-to-rise attitude. Evans made more time to swim not only because she excelled, but also because she enjoyed traveling, meeting people, and the camaraderie of belonging to a team.
National Champion
Evans’s coaches described her swimming style as unorthodox but unusually efficient. Rather than the traditional bent-at-the-elbow arm in freestyle, Janet kept her arms straight—a “windmill” stroke that was technically correct under the water. Although Evans had developed a fast turnover to keep up with larger and taller competitors, her quicker stroke became a habitEvans always swam as fast as she could at every practice. Doctors who studied her stroke concluded that she was physiologically unique. Her lung capacity and way of breathing allowed her to be extremely energy efficient. In addition to working out hard and swimming fast during each practice, Evans prepared herself mentally before every swim meet by visualizing herself swimming the race and by knowing what to expect from her opponents.
In 1987, all of Evans’s hard work and dedication paid off. Not only did she earn three national titles, but she also set three world records. In July, Janet set her first world records at the U.S. Swimming Long Course National Championships in Clovis, California, for the 800-meter freestyle and the 1,500-meter freestyle. That December, she set the world record in the 400-meter freestyle at the US Open in Orlando, Florida. For her efforts, she was honored with United States Swimming’s Swimmer of the Year award. As the Olympics neared, Evans’s times continued to improve. She was the first woman to swim the 1,500-meter freestyle faster than 16 minutes and was faster in that event than the 1972 Olympic men’s gold medalist.
Olympic Medalist
At the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, Evans earned a gold medal for the 400-meter freestyle while setting a world record. She also won the 800-meter freestyle, again, in Olympic record time. She won Gold in the 400-meter individual medley, and set an American record in the process. Evans was the only American woman to win a gold medal in an individual swimming event in Seoul.
As a high school senior, seventeen-year-old Janet had already earned three Olympic gold medals. She was the Fiesta Bowl Grand Marshal and was in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. She met the President of the United States and was called by the Tonight Show. She signed many autographs and was covered by Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Life. Despite the notoriety, Evans preferred to be “just Janet.” This meant spending time with friends and practicing the piano.
In 1989, Janet attended Stanford University. She lived in a dormitory and majored in communications. However, she also chose to continue her swimming career. That year, she broke her own world record in the 800-meter freestyle, set her first American record in the 1,650-yard freestyle in a short-course (25-yard) pool, and won the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award as the nation’s top amateur athlete of 1989. In 1990, Evans swept the National Collegiate Athletic Association Championships with first-place finishes in the 500-yard and 1,650-yard freestyle, the 400-yard individual medley, and the 800-yard freestyle relay. She repeated her victories the following year in three of the events and took second in the 400-yard individual medley.
Evans won the gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle at the 1992 Olympics as well as the silver in the 400-meter freestyle. In 1993, she continued to dominate the 400 and 800-meter freestyle events at the US Nationals and the World Aquatics Championships. In 1995, her remarkable pace began to slow. Her best finish in the summer nationals was second place in the 400-meter freestyle. At the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, appearing in her third Olympics, Evans suffered her worst disappointment in international competition. After finishing ninth in qualifying heats for the 400-meter freestyle, she chose not to compete in the finals. She finished a distant sixth in the 800-meter freestyle.
After eight years of gold medals and world records, Evans decided to retire from competition. During her competitive career, she earned four Olympic gold medals, forty-five national titles, seventeen international titles, and set three world records and six American records. In 2001, Evans was elected to the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
She worked as a motivational speaker and held business partnerships with BMW, Arena, and Metamucil. She married Billy Willson in 2004, and the couple had two childrena daughter named Sydney and a son named Jake. After a fourteen-year hiatus from training, Evans returned to competitive swimming in 2011. At the age of 40, she competed at the 2012 Olympic Trials but failed to qualify for the US Olympic team. She later retired from competitive swimming.
Evans has remained active since departing the sport. Most notably, she was involved in the process that landed the city of Los Angeles the 2028 Olympic games. She later served as the Chief Athlete Officer for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Evans also became an advocate for equal opportunity for women in sport.
Summary
Dubbed “America’s Golden Girl,” Janet Evans proved that a small, five-foot-seven, 105-pound woman could swim faster than larger competitors. As a five-time Olympic medalist, her remarkable success and charismatic personality won the hearts of fans and competitors alike. Above all, Evans showed that a winner is characterized by happiness with one’s best effort.
Bibliography
Crouse, Karen. "At 40, Former Olympic Champion Returns with a Different Focus." TheNew York Times, 21 Feb. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/sports/janet-evans-olympic-champion-swimmer-returns-with-a-different-focus.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Deitsch, Richard, Janet Evans, and Mark Bechtel. “Q and A: Janet Evans.” Sports Illustrated, 14 June 2004, pp. 23–25.
Evans, Janet. Janet Evans’ Total Swimming. Champaign, Human Kinetics, 2007.
Evans, Janet, "Janet Evans: Title IX Moved Mountains for Women—but There’s So Much More to Do." Newsweek, 22 June 2022, www.newsweek.com/janet-evans-title-ix-moved-mountains-so-much-do-1715628. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Gonsalves, Kelly, and Susan LaMondia. First to the Wall: One Hundred Years of Olympic Swimming. East Longmeadow, FreeStyle, 1999.
"Janet Evans Misses 400 Free Cut." ESPN, 26 June 20212, www.espn.com/olympics/summer/2012/swimming/story/‗/id/8098878/janet-evans-fails-reach-400-freestyle-final-us-olympic-swimming-trials. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.