Shelley Mann

Shelley Isabel Mann (October 15, 1937 – March 24, 2005) was an American competition swimmer and Olympic medalist at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia where she won the gold medal in the women's 100-meter butterfly event, and was a member of the U.S. team that won the silver medal for the women's 4×100-meter freestyle relay.

Mann was born in Long Island, New York in 1937 to Hamilton and Isabel Mann.

Her father was in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Mann caught polio at age six while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

She spent weeks in the hospital and was left with a paralyzed right leg.

Over the next few years, Mann took daily sessions of therapy, including passive and active hydrotherapy.

Although progress was slow, with her saying "I’m just no good" to her father, this eventually paid off, because she regained control over her arms, and then by the age of ten, she had regained control over her legs.

At the age of 11, she learned to swim.

At the age of 12, Shelley Mann was swimming competitively, and by the time she was 14 she had won the first of what would eventually be 24 AAU national championships in the freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly, and individual medley events.

In 1955, Mann graduated from Washington-Lee High School.

At the 100 metres butterfly event at the 1955 Pan American Games, Shelley Mann won a bronze medal.

Mann first learned to swim the butterfly stroke when meeting Charles Silva and William Yorzyk at the 1956 US Olympic trials for swimming, where Silva taught Mann, using Yorzyk as a demonstration.

Both Yorzyk and Mann would go on to win the only butterfly events at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

Yorzyk recalled that Mann had trouble breaking bad habits when transitioning from butterfly-breaststroke to butterfly.

When she moved to study at the American University in Washington, D.C., she joined the Walter Reed Swim Club.

The swim team had to train at 6:00am because the Walter Reed medical hospital was needed for the patients.

At 17, she won the 100 metres butterfly event at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and placed sixth in the 100m freestyle event.

By 19, Mann had already retired from swimming, and enrolled at Cornell University.

Upon graduating from Cornell, Mann set up her own swim school in Arlington, named the "Shelley Mann Swim School".

Shelley Mann received the National B’nai B’rith Award for “high principle and achievement in sports”, and award of merit in Aquatics from the Los Angeles Times, and a goodwill tour of New Zealand from the New Zealand Swimming Association.

At 15, she held multiple world records, though these are currently not FINA recognized as they were achieve before 1957.

She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an "honor swimmer" in 1966, and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.

Shelley Mann died on 24 March, 2005, at the age of 67 and was buried in her families plot of land in Thornrose Cemetery, Staunton.