Summer Olympics! The current record for most medals over the course of a career is eleven. Gary works hard in the water and just as hard out of it.

Born on September 26, 1974 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Gary Hall Jr. comes from a long line of swimmers. Gary’s father, Gary Hall Sr. was a three-time Olympian (1968, 1972, 1976) and was the American flag bearer at the opening ceremonies at the 1976 Montreal Games – the last swimmer to be so honored. Gary’s uncle, Charles Keating III, was also a member of the Olympic swim team in 1976 as a breaststroker. His grandfather, Charles Keating, Jr. was an All-American and national champion swimmer in the 1940s and, through the years, has been an enthusiastic and generous supporter of US swimming, financing the construction of state-of-the-art facilities in Cincinnati and Phoenix, a strong supporter of U.S. swimming.

Though Gary started to swim at a very young age and spent a lot of time around the pool, he didn’t get serious with it until he was 16. As Gary’s dad started to build the Phoenix Swim Club, he decided to join it.

Gary’s first taste of success came in 1992 when he won his first title at the Junior National Championships. This big win jump-started Gary’s international swimming career – a career that has seen both ups and downs, superb performances when the pressure was highest, as well as mistakes and setbacks.

Gary attended the University of Texas, a great swimming school. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics there were a total of eight current and former Longhorns including Gary.

In 1995 Gary began training with Mike Bottom, the co-head coach of the University of California, Berkeley, who is working toward completing his Ph.D. in Sports Psychology. Under Bottom’s leadership, Gary and his teammates engaged in double workouts on a daily basis mixing long slow swims and high intensity sprints, weight lifting, running jumping, and speed bag punching. The speed bag helps improve hand-eye coordination and it should be noted here that Gary is a big fan of boxing as well. Gary is famous for doing a little shadow boxing and flexing before big races such as Olympic Trials and the Olympics.

At the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Gary won two individual silvers and two relay gold medals, anchoring the USA’s world-record setting 400m freestyle and medley relays with two of the fastest splits in history. He then took an extended break in 1997. Gary reflects, “1997 was an off year for me, because I took a very extended break after the Olympics. In the summer of 1997 I intended to put in a full season and to swim well, but I injured my shoulder in the weeks before Nationals, which was the qualifying meet for Pan Pacifics and World Championships. I had a bad meet.”

1998 started and end well for Gary. He won two relay gold medals in the Long Course World Championships in Perth and got his second and third National titles in April. In December, Gary competed in a World Cup meet held in Texas, where he won the 50 free.

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Diabetes
In 1999 Gary faced serious problems. Gary was feeling tired all of the time. He was feeling an unquenchable thirst and was experiencing blurry vision among other ailments. Finally, after collapsing at a party, he was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes.

Type-1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children and young adults, and was previously known as juvenile diabetes. In Type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce insulin. Insulin is necessary for the body to be able to use sugar. Sugar is the basic fuel for the cells in the body, and insulin takes the sugar from the blood into the cells. If not treated properly, diabetes may lead to blindness, amputations and even death.

When Gary was first diagnosed, he was discouraged by his doctors who kept telling him that he wouldn’t be able to compete anymore. The news of having diabetes was extremely difficult for Gary to deal with. Gary reflects, “I was extremely upset, shocked and discouraged. I didn’t have a very good understanding of what diabetes was. I believed that it happened to older, over-weight and under-active people, and here I had spent my entire life eating right, exercising, minding my health etc. There is no history of the disease anywhere in my family, so you can imagine my disbelief. There exists a certain response within us as humans to ask, ‘why me?’ when something goes wrong, and I experienced that.”

At first Gary had problems accepting his disease. “The first thing that I did was go home to my computer and look up as much on the disease as I could. And having a better understanding of what it was and how to treat it gave me some encouragement. As far as swimming went, I had no idea if I would be able to continue. It was frightening because I had gone through so much and felt that I was finally getting back into the sport. I had overcome so much opposition and had put in the longest and toughest season since the Atlanta Olympics. Then being diagnosed with a life threatening disease one week before I was to compete in the season’s biggest meet (the Spring Nationals) - all I could do was shake my head and flee the country. I hid out in the mountains of South America and it was there that I found the will to continue on.” Gary’s girlfriend at the time (and now his wife) Elizabeth Peterson, gave Gary a tremendous amount of support and accompanied him to South America.

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Moving Ahead
When Gary returned, he heard about Anne Peters, a Los Angeles Endocrinologist at the USC Keck School of Medicine. She assured him that there was no reason to quit competitive swimming, that it was possible for him to swim again. Since then he and Dr. Peters have been working together – in fact, she accompanied him to Sydney to watch over his health. Under her watchful eye, Gary found his way back into life and back into the sport. He also found that his attitude toward life in general had changed profoundly. “I definitely don’t take anything for granted. I live every single day as if it’s going to be my last.”

Gary went back into serious training with Coach Bottom and made it to the United States Summer Nationals, which were the qualification for the Pan Pacific Championships. Despite the fact that he’d suffered from the flu several days before, Gary made an impressive comeback. He won the 50 meter freestyle with a personal best and earned his fourth National title!

He placed second in the 50 meter freestyle at the 1999 Pan Pacs and was a member of the 1999-2000 National All-America Team, the National A Team and the National All-Star Team, which was comprised of the highest-ranking Americans in each event in the FINA World Rankings.

Gary went on to compete and focused on the U.S. Olympic Trails in 2000, where he won the 50 meter freestyle and placed second in the 100 free, qualifying him for four events at the 2000 Olympics. Gary’s swim in the 50 meter freestyle at Olympic Trials (21.76) broke Tom Jager’s decade-old American record and was the fastest time in the history of organized competition! That record still stands today.

Gary found tremendous success at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney . He won an individual gold in the 50 meter freestyle, sharing it with his teammate and training partner at Berkeley, Anthony Ervin. He also won gold and silver in the relays and the bronze medal in the 100 meter freestyle.

Again Gary took an extended break after the Games and started to swim again in August 2001, competing in the Summer Nationals where he won the 50 meter freestyle. This victory was the qualification for the Goodwill Games in Brisbane, Australia, in August 2001. Gary competed well but had some problems with his blood sugar. The large number of races he was required to swim during one day resulted in his blood sugar level jumping up and down. But he got it under control and went on swimming for the Stars and Stripes.

In the Summer of 2002 Gary competed at the United States Senior National Championships in the 50-meter freestyle and qualified to compete at the Pan American Championships in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, returning him to the International stage. Gary prepared for just a few weeks for the Pan American Games, yet still took the bronze medal with a time of 22.43, just three one-hundredths of a second behind the top finisher, Fernando Sherer of Brazil. A rematch of that exciting race is already being talked about throughout Brazil and the United States.

Gary is training every day to compete at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 and is in position to make history. He swims every day and supplements his water training with an extensive dry-land regimen. An appearance in Athens would make Gary and his father, Gary Hall Sr. the only father/son duo in the history of the Olympics to each have three Olympic Games under their respective belts. Additionally, if Gary wins as many medals in Athens as he has won in his previous two Olympic appearances, he would surpass the American record for most medals won over an Olympic career in any sport!

Outside the pool, Gary travels the world, passionately sharing his love for the sport of swimming and his experiences as a diabetic with children, parents, coaches, doctors, and executives. He also serves as a national spokesperson for The American Diabetes Association.

Long after Gary retires he plans to continue endorsing products that he believes in, promoting the sport of swimming, and providing motivation to people with diabetes. Gary has a keen interest to do television commentary for sporting events and also plans to host swim competitions that are compelling and exciting to fans throughout the world.