Biography of Penny Heyns

Penelope Heyns (better known as Penny Heyns) (born 8 November 1974) is a South African swimmer. She is best known for being the only woman in the history of the Olympic Games to have won both the 100 m and 200 m breaststroke events – at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games – making her South Africa’s first post-apartheid Olympic gold medallist following South Africa’s re-admission to the Games in 1992.

Education

She was born in the city of Springs in what is now Gauteng province. After completing high school in Amanzimtoti, Kwazulu-Natal Province in 1992, she studied psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1993 to 1997, where she twice won the most outstanding athlete award (in 1994 and 1995).

Sporting career

Heyns was the youngest member of the South African Olympic team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. She was also a member of the South African squad at the 1994 Commonwealth Games, where she won a bronze medal in the 200 m breaststroke event.

She broke her first world record, the 100 m breaststroke, in Durban in March 1996. Heyns was again part of the South African Olympic team in Atlanta in 1996, where she won the gold medal for the 100 m breaststroke (also breaking the world record for the event) as well as the gold medal for the 200 m breaststroke (also breaking the Olympic record for the event). This made her the only woman in the history of the Olympic Games to have won both the 100 m and 200 m breaststroke events.

During the 1998 Goodwill Games in New York, Heyns set the 50 m breaststroke world record.

In 1999, Heyns set a spate of eleven world records in three months, swimming at events on three different continents. This made her the simultaneous holder of five out of the possible six breaststroke world records, a feat that had never been achieved before in the history of swimming.

She was also a member of the South African Olympic team at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

Heyns retired from competitive swimming in 2001. Currently (2004) Heyns is an athlete’s commission member of the International Swimming Federation (FINA), a businesswoman, a motivational and public speaker as well as a television presenter. She has also completed an autobiography.

Heyns was voted 52nd in the Top 100 Great South Africans (see List of South Africans) in 2004.