Bauer, Sybil
Swimming
b. Sept. 18, 1903, Chicago, IL
d. Jan. 31, 1927
Bauer won an Olympic gold medal and eleven national championships, and she undoubtedly would have won more if there had been more backstroke events for women when she was swimming competitively.
Going into the 1924 Olympics, she held world records at every backstroke distance. In fact, at an informal meet in Bermuda in 1922, she had done the 440-yard backstroke in 6:24.8, four seconds better than the men's world record. Unfortunately, that time was never recognized because the meet was unsanctioned.
Bauer easily won the only Olympic backstroke event, the 100-meter. Her time of 1:23.2 was more than four seconds faster than the silver medalist's 1:27.4.
Her national championships came in the outdoor 100-yard backstroke in 1922, the 150-meter in 1923, the 220-yard in 1924 and 1925, and the indoor 100-yard backstroke from 1921 through 1926. In six years of swimming competitively, she set twenty-three world records.
As a student at Northwestern University, Bauer also competed in basketball and field hockey. She was engaged to marry Ed Sullivan, then a Chicago sportswriter and later a New York Broadway columnist and long-time host of the television variety show, when she was stricken by cancer.