Florence Chadwick

Champion of Champions

The late Florence Chadwick, a native San Diegan, was born to the water. At the age of ten, after six years of swimming defeats, she won spectacularly! Competing against senior swimmers in a two-and-a-half-mile night "rough water swim", she finished in fourth place. At eleven she won her first race in a six mile rough water swim in San Diego. Victory was all she needed. She continued to race for nineteen years throughout the United States.

Turning professional in 1945, she joined former teammate, Esther Williams and appeared in the movie, "Bathing Beauty".

In 1948 she began her training to swim the English Channel. Two years later she became the first woman to swim that body of water both ways.

While working as a stockbroker in San Diego, she was the only woman on the Board of the San Diego "Hall of Champions" Board. Her devotion to youth groups and encouragement to young people to fulfill their dreams, heralds her as a true champion.

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