Emma McKeon

Emma McKeon (born May 24, 1994, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia) is the most successful Australian athlete in Olympic history, the winner of 11 medals. At the 2020 Games in Tokyo—which were postponed until 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic—she made history by becoming the first female swimmer and the first Australian to win seven medals at a single Olympics. McKeon had earlier won four medals at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. She specializes in freestyle and butterfly races of 200 meters or less.

Family

McKeon is one of three children born into a competitive swimming family. Her mother, Susie (née Woodhouse) McKeon, participated in the 1982 Commonwealth Games, and Ron McKeon, her father, swam at the Olympics in 1980 and 1984. David McKeon, her only brother, competed at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. In addition, Emma McKeon’s uncle, Rob Woodhouse, captured a bronze medal in the 400-meter men’s individual medley at the 1984 Games.

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Early swimming career

McKeon grew up swimming in both pools and the ocean. Her first major competition was in 2010 at the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. There she won a gold medal in the 4 × 100-meter medley relay. In individual events she won a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle and bronze medals in the 50-meter and the 200-meter freestyle events.

In 2012, at age 17, McKeon narrowly missed earning a spot on the Australian Olympic swim team. Disappointed, she quit competitive swimming. However, by the end of the year she had rededicated herself and returned to swimming. In 2013 she helped her team win silver in the 4 × 100-meter freestyle relay at the Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA; later called World Aquatics) World Championships in Barcelona. She won two more silver medals as a preliminary swimmer in relays. (Prelim swimmers compete in the preliminary relay races that determine which teams qualify for the finals. Although prelim swimmers may not participate in the final race, they still win medals for helping the team reach the finals.)

Commonwealth Games, Olympics, and world championships

In 2014 McKeon attended the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. She won a gold medal in the 200-meter freestyle event, setting an Australian record with a time of 1 min 55.57 sec. She also earned bronze medals in the 100-meter freestyle and the 100-meter butterfly as well as gold medals in three relay events (4 × 100-meter freestyle relay, 4 × 200-meter freestyle relay, and 4 × 100-meter medley relay). At the 2015 world championships in Kazan, Russia, McKeon helped the 4 × 100-meter freestyle relay team win gold and the 4 × 100-meter medley team win bronze.

Over the next few years McKeon continued to perform successfully in competitions. In 2016 she went to Rio de Janeiro to compete in her first Olympics. She won four medals, including a bronze medal in the 200-meter freestyle. As a team member she won a gold medal in the 4 × 100-meter freestyle relay and two silver medals in the 4 × 200-meter freestyle relay and the 4 × 100-meter medley relay.

At the 2017 world championships in Budapest, McKeon won silver medals in the 200-meter freestyle (tying with U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky) and the 100-meter butterfly. She also won various medals in the team events. Those wins helped to set her up for success in the 2018 Commonwealth Games, held at Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. She earned a gold medal in the 100-meter butterfly, setting a Commonwealth Games record with a time of 56.78 sec. Her other gold medals were in the 4 × 100-meter freestyle relay, the 4 × 200-meter freestyle relay, and the 4 × 100-meter medley relay. She helped to set either Commonwealth Games records or world records in each of those races. She also won bronze medals in the 200-meter freestyle and the 200-meter butterfly.

In 2019 McKeon received a bachelor’s degree in public health and health promotion focusing on nutrition from Griffith University in Queensland. She also continued to swim. At the world championships that year at Kwangju (Gwangju), South Korea, she won six medals. Three of them were gold medals, in the 4 × 100-meter freestyle relay, the 4 × 200-meter freestyle relay, and the 4 × 100-meter mixed medley relay. The swimmers’ combined time in the 4 × 200-meter freestyle relay was 7 min 41.50 sec, which was a world record. In addition to the gold medals, McKeon won silver medals in the 4 × 100-meter mixed freestyle relay and the 4 × 100-meter medley relay. She won a bronze medal in the 100-meter butterfly.

McKeon’s outing at the 2020 Summer Olympics was impressive. She became the first female swimmer and only the second woman in history—after Soviet gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya in 1952—to win seven medals in a single Olympics. Four of McKeon’s seven medals were gold, and the other three were bronze. In the four gold medal wins—in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle, the 4 × 100-meter freestyle relay, and the 4 × 100-meter medley relay—she either set or helped to set Olympic or world records. Her three bronze medals were in the 100-meter butterfly, the 4 × 200-meter freestyle relay, and the 4 × 100-meter mixed medley relay. After her two Olympic appearances she had a total of 11 medals, more than any other Australian athlete.

After the Tokyo Games, McKeon took a break from swimming and skipped the world championships in 2022. However, later that year she competed in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, where she won eight medals, six of which were gold: 4 × 100-meter freestyle relay, 4 × 100-meter medley relay, 4 × 100-meter mixed medley relay, 4 × 100-meter mixed freestyle relay, 50-meter freestyle, and 50-meter butterfly. She won a silver in the 100-meter butterfly and a bronze in the 100-meter freestyle. Those brought her career total to 20 medals, a record for the Commonwealth Games. In 2023 McKeon competed at the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan. There she won a gold medal in the 4 × 100-meter freestyle relay and silver medals in the 4 × 100-meter medley relay and the 4 × 100-meter mixed medley relay.