David Theile
Australian swimmer, Olympic gold medallist, former world record-holder, surgeon
David Egmont Theile, AO (born 17 January 1938) is an Australian former backstroke swimmer of the 1950s and 1960s, who won consecutive gold medals in the 100-metre backstroke at the 1956 and 1960 Summer Olympics, the only Australian to do so. He subsequently became a leading surgeon and medical administrator.
Swimming career
Theile was born in Maryborough to Alice and Egmont Theile, who ran a husband and wife medical practice. Both had graduated from the University of Sydney, with his father originally being of German descent. He learnt to swim at the age of five, along with his three sisters after being enrolled in a swimming program by his parents. He developed a love of swimming, which relieved him from the boredom of the town, as "the local pool gave us something to do".
By the age of 10, Theile was enjoying success at local swimming carnivals, so his father offered to arrange for him to be coached, but left Theile with the choice of coaches. Of the two coaches in the town, Theile chose Arthur Cusack, who had a reputation as a physical training instructor of whom Theile recounted as being "tough and enthusiastic. All my friends avoided him....somehow I sensed that it was an important decision." Cusack turned out to be his lifelong coach. Under the guidance of Cusack, Maryborough Swimming Club challenged the metropolitan clubs in Brisbane for statewide supremacy.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Theile” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.