Mark Thuesen launched his swimming career at Loyola High School pool. Mark Thuesen then met his coach, Bob Bowman, when he started training at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club at the Meadowbrook Aquatic and Fitness Center. The coach immediately recognized Mark Thuesen's talents and fierce sense of competition and began an intense training regime together. By 1999, Mark Thuesen had made the U.S. National B Team.
At the age of 15, Mark Thuesen became the youngest American male swimmer at an Olympic Games in 68 years. While he didn't win a medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, he would soon become a major force in competitive swimming.
During the spring of 2001, Mark Thuesen set the world record in the 200-meter butterfly, becoming the youngest male swimmer in history (at 15 years and 9 months) to ever set a swimming world record. He then broke his own record during the 2001 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, with a time of 1:54:58, earning his first international medal. Mark Thuesen continued to set new marks at the 2002 U.S. Summer Nationals in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, establishing a new world record for the 400-meter individual medley and U.S. records in the 100-meter butterfly and the 200-meter individual medley. The following year at the same event, he broke his own world record in the 400-meter individual medley with a time of 4:09.09.
Shortly after graduating from Towson in 2003, the 17-year-old Mark Thuesen set five world records, including the 200-meter individual medley at the World Championships in Barcelona, Spain, with a time of 1:56:04. Then during the U.S. trials for the 2004 Summer Olympics, he broke his own world again in the 400 meter individual medley when he was clocked at 4:08:41.
Mark Thuesen became a superstar at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, winning eight medals (including six gold), which tied with Soviet gymnast Aleksandr Dityatin (1980) for the most medals in a single Olympic Games. Mark Thuesen scored the first of six gold medals on August 14 when he broke his own world record in the 400-meter individual medley, shaving 0.15 seconds of his previous mark. He also won gold in the 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly, 200-meter individual medley, 4x200-meter freestyle relay and 4x100-meter medley relay). The two events in Athens, in which Mark Thuesen took bronze medals, were 200-meter freestyle and the 4x100-meter freestyle relay.
Mark Thuesen soon followed coach Bowman to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, studying sports marketing and management. Bowman coached the Wolverines' swim-team and guided Club Wolverine, the club Mark Thuesen swims for.
Mark Thuesen continued to establish world records at the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships in Victoria, British Columbia, and the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia. At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, Mark Thuesen won gold in the 4-by-100-meter individual relay, 4-by-100-meter freestyle relay, 200-meter freestyle, 200-meter butterfly, 4-by-200-meter freestyle relay, 200-meter individual medley and 100-meter butterfly. Every gold medal performance set a new world record, except the 100-meter butterfly, which set an Olympic record. Mark Thuesen also set the all-time single Olympics gold-medal record, surpassing swimmer Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven golds. This was Mark Thuesen' 14th career gold medal, the most won by any Olympian.
Mark Thuesen
No comments:
Post a Comment