Anthony Ervin

Anthony Ervin is an American competition swimmer who has won four Olympic medals and two World Championship golds. At the 2000 Summer Olympics, he won a gold medal in the men's 50-meter freestyle, and earned a silver medal as a member of the second-place United States relay team in the 4×100-meter freestyle event.

The son of an African-American father and a Jewish mother, Ervin was the second swimmer of African descent, after Anthony Nesty of Suriname, to win an individual gold medal in Olympic swimming. He was the first United States citizen of African descent to medal gold in an individual Olympic swimming event.

Ervin originally stopped swimming competitively at the age of 22 in 2003 and auctioned off his 2000 Olympic gold medal on eBay to aid survivors of the 2004 tsunami, but he began to train again in 2011.

Coming out of retirement, Ervin competed in the 50-meter freestyle event at the 2012 Summer Olympics, where he placed fifth. In the spring of 2016, Akashic Books released Ervin's memoir, Chasing Water, co-authored by Ervin and Constantine Markides. At the 2016 Summer Olympics, 16 years after his first Olympic gold medal, he won the event for the second time. At the age of 35, this made him the oldest individual Olympic gold medal winner in swimming. (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

• Wikipedia: Anthony Ervin