Australian · Gold Coast, Australia · Born 9 May 1980Australian distance swimmer who won consecutive Olympic 1500m freestyle titles in 2000 and 2004.
Grant Hackett won his second Olympic 1500m freestyle gold in Athens 2004 while swimming with a partially collapsed lung -- a detail that only became public afterward, once the race itself was already history. He'd already turned back challenges from two swimmers six years his junior in the same final, both of whom had spent the previous four years waiting for exactly this chance to catch him. That win extended a run that's more remarkable the longer you look at it: Hackett went unbeaten in the 1500m freestyle in every major final -- Olympics, World Championships, Pan Pacs, Commonwealth Games -- for eleven straight years, from 1996 through the 2007 World Championships. No swimmer before or since has controlled a single Olympic event for that long. Hackett's Sydney 2000 win came with its own complication: he raced only partly recovered from illness, a detail teammates at the time worried more about than he apparently did. Captain of the Australian swim team from 2005 until his retirement in 2008, he's since built a second, very different career in banking and media -- a long way from the sport that made him one of Australia's most decorated distance swimmers ever.
Back-to-back Olympic 1500m freestyle champion; dominant distance freestyler for a decade
His 1500m world record stood for 10 years — the longest any 1500m freestyle record has been held in the modern era.
Did You Know?How They Played
Powerful stroke technique with exceptional endurance and race tactics
Lasting Impact
Greatest distance freestyle swimmer in history
Career Honours
- Olympic champion 1500m freestyle 2000, 2004
- World champion 1500m freestyle 1998, 2001, 2003, 2005
Australian Athletes