John Hencken

American breaststroke swimmer and three-time Olympic champion who set eleven world records across the 100m and 200m breaststroke in the 1970s.

Born in Culver City, California, on 29 May 1954, John Frederick Hencken began swimming as therapy after a knee operation and went on to become the dominant breaststroker of the mid-1970s. Swimming for Stanford University and the Santa Clara Swim Club, he set his first world record in the 200m breaststroke at the 1972 Munich Olympics on his way to gold, adding bronze in the 100m the same Games. Hencken's peak came at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where he won the 100m breaststroke in a world-record 1:03.11 and took gold again in the 4x100m medley relay, adding a silver in the 200m breaststroke behind Britain's David Wilkie. Across his career he set six world records in the 100m breaststroke and five in the 200m, and won the 100m breaststroke title at the inaugural 1973 World Championships. Hencken competed at a third Olympics in 1980, though the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games meant he never had the chance to compete there, ending his Olympic career with five medals across two Games (three gold, one silver, one bronze). His 100m breaststroke Olympic record stood until the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Hencken was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame and remains one of the most decorated American breaststrokers of the 1970s, part of a golden generation of U.S. male swimmers alongside contemporaries like Rick DeMont and Jim Montgomery.

Powerful, technically efficient breaststroke

One of the great American breaststrokers of the 1970s golden era