Michelle Ford

Michelle Ford is an Australian former long-distance freestyle and butterfly swimmer of the 1970s and 1980s, born on 15 July 1962 and raised in the Sydney suburb of Sans Souci. At the age of 13 she broke six state and three national records at the New South Wales Age Championships in 1976 and was selected for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow she won gold in the 800-metre freestyle and bronze in the 200-metre butterfly, and finished fourth in the 400-metre freestyle. She was the only non-Eastern Bloc woman to win an individual gold medal at those Games, set two world records in her career, and was the first Australian woman to win individual Olympic medals in two distinct specialised strokes.