Silvia Poll

Silvia Poll is a swimmer from Costa Rica who won her country's first Olympic medal. Born in Managua, Nicaragua, on 24 September 1970 to German parents who moved to Costa Rica after the 1972 earthquake, she took the silver medal in the women's 200 metre freestyle at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and also swam for Costa Rica at the 1992 Games. She won a total of eight medals at the 1987 Pan American Games, and two of her times from those Games were still Costa Rican records in 2009. At the 1986 Central American and Caribbean Games she set Games records in the 200 and 400 metre freestyle and in the 100 and 200 metre backstroke that stood for twenty years. Her younger sister Claudia Poll is also an Olympic medallist, and the two are Costa Rica's only Olympic medallists.