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". == Early days == David Wilkie's parents came from Aberdeen, Scotland, but were stationed in Colombo, Ceylon, when Wilkie was born on 8 March 1954. His family regularly patronised the open air Colombo Swimming Club, where Wilkie learned to swim. When he was 11 years old his parents sent him to Scotland as a boarding school pupil at Daniel Stewart's College in Edinburgh, and, while a pupil there, he joined the Warrender Baths Club, one of Scotland's most successful swimming clubs. It was there that he began to train intensively and develop his specialist stroke, the breaststroke under one of Britain's leading coaches Frank Thomas, whom Wilkie credited with giving him the motivation to become a world class swimmer. In 1969, Wilkie was chosen to join the elite Scottish Training Squad organised by the Scottish Amateur Swimming Association. == National and international success == 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.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.