Allen Stack

Allen McIntyre Stack was an American competition swimmer who won the Olympic gold medal in the men's 100-metre backstroke at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London and also held a world record. Born in 1928, he swam for the Yale Bulldogs in National Collegiate Athletic Association competition from 1947 to 1949 and graduated from Yale with a bachelor's degree in 1949. After serving in the United States Navy from 1951 to 1954 he returned to the pool at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, where he placed fourth in the final of the same event. He then took a law degree at Columbia University Law School in 1956 and practised law in Honolulu, Hawaii, until 1998. The International Swimming Hall of Fame inducted him as an Honor Swimmer in 1979, and he died in 1999.