About David Wilkie
David Andrew Wilkie (8 March 1954 – 22 May 2024) was a Scottish swimmer who was the Olympic 200m breaststroke champion in 1976, the first British swimmer to win an Olympic gold medal since Anita Lonsbrough in 1960, and the first British man to do so since Henry Taylor in 1908. He is the only person to have held British, Commonwealth, European, World and Olympic swimming titles at the same time. Wilkie, a member of the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame and the International Swimming Hall of Fame, has been described as Scotland's greatest and Britain's finest swimmer. Fellow Olympic breaststroke gold medallist Duncan Goodhew considered him an "extraordinary talent" and "one of Britain's greatest ever athletes". In 1969, Wilkie swam representing Britain for the first time in an international swimming contest, where he came up against the Russian 200-metre breaststroke world record-holder Nikolai Pankin. Wilkie broke the British record for the 200-metre breaststroke in an international match against Denmark in July 1970. He then won a bronze medal in front of his home crowd in the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in the 200-metre breaststroke breaking his own British record again.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.