Janet Evans

Janet Beth Evans (born August 28, 1971) is an American former competition swimmer who specialized in distance freestyle events. Evans was a world champion and world record-holder, and won a total of four gold medals at the 1988 and the 1992 Olympics. Born in Fullerton, California, Evans grew up in neighboring Placentia, where she started swimming competitively as a child. By the age of 11, she was setting national age group records in distance events. After swimming as a teenager for Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team (FAST Swimming) and graduating from El Dorado High School, Evans attended Stanford University, where she swam for the Stanford Cardinal swimming and diving team from 1989 to 1991 under Head Coach Skip Kenney. She received the Honda Sports Award for Swimming and Diving, recognizing her as the outstanding college female swimmer of the year in 1988–89. When the NCAA placed weekly hours limits on athletic training time, she quit the Stanford swim team to focus on training. She later attended the University of Texas at Austin before graduating from the University of Southern California with a bachelor's degree in communications in 1994.Evans was distinctive for her unorthodox "windmill" stroke and her apparently inexhaustible cardio-respiratory reserves. Slight of build and short of stature, she more than once found herself competing and winning against bigger and stronger athletes, some of whom were subsequently found to have been using performance-enhancing drugs.Janet Evans was the 1989 recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. She was named the Female World Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World Magazine in 1987, 1989, and 1990. In 1988, as a junior in high school, she was recognized as a "Rising Star" by the Los Angeles Times.In 2010, Evans returned to competitive swimming in Masters swimming.Evans married Bill Willson in 2004, with whom she has two children. As of June 2012, the family lives in Laguna Beach, California.On November 3, 2016, Evans was chosen to serve as co-Grand Marshal of the 2017 Rose Parade.

As of August 2019, Evans works as chief athlete officer for the 2028 Summer Olympics organizing committee.