About Bill Kirby
William Ashley Kirby is an Australian swimmer who was competitive on an international level in the nineties and early 2000s. He specialized in freestyle and butterfly and won a gold medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney as part of the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay team. He was an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship holder. Kirby's final international competition was at the 2001 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, where along with Klim, Hackett and Thorpe, he lowered the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay world record to 7m 04.66s. Although he missed selection for the 1998 World Aquatics Championships in his home town, he bounced back to qualify for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, where he won a silver medal in the 200m butterfly. At the 1999 Pan Pacific Championships in Sydney, he was a member of the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay team (along with Michael Klim, Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett) that lowered the world record, at the time, to 7m 08.79s.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.