Ragnhild Hveger

Ragnhild Hveger was a Danish freestyle swimmer, born on 10 December 1920 in Nyborg and later known as Ragnhild Andersen, who died on 1 December 2011. She began competing at twelve, won a Nordic championship at fourteen, and at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin took the silver medal in the women's 400 metre freestyle behind the Dutch swimmer Rie Mastenbroek. Her greatest meeting was the 1938 European championships in London, where she won the 100 metre freestyle, the 400 metre freestyle and the 4 x 100 metre freestyle relay, and the British press called her the Golden Torpedo. Between 1936 and 1943 she set 44 world records, and in 1941 she held 19 at once. Her links to Nazism through her family, and her move to Germany in 1943, left her unpopular in Denmark after the war and she was kept out of the 1948 Olympics; she returned for the 1952 Games in Helsinki and retired in 1954. She entered the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1966.