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| Born | 30 January 1945 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Country |  Great Britain | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Paralympic swimming | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Retired | 1988 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Mike Kenny, MBE (born 30 January 1945) is a retired British swimmer. He won 16 gold medals and two silvers over four Paralympic Games, making him the second most successful British Paralympian of all time. He twice retained his gold medals in three swimming events, breaking numerous world records in the process.
Michael Joseph Kenny was born on 30 January 1945. Kenny was an engineer in the nuclear power industry and in 1971, while working a shift as a favour for a friend, he fell from the ladder he was using to work on a metal rig. He landed on his heels and the force was sent straight up his spine to his neck causing permanent damage and paralysing him. [1] He began swimming as part of the recovery process. [2]
While competing at the Toronto 1976 Paralympic Games, Kenny shared a room with future International Paralympic Committee (IPC) president Philip Craven, in Canada's York University, where the British athletes were housed. [3] He did not attend the University of York in the UK, as is often mistakenly asserted.
Kenny is one of the most successful British Paralympians, having won 16 individual gold medals and two team relay silver medals. [2] [4] [5] His achievements were not fully recognised at the time because the IPC and the British Paralympic Association were not established until 1989 and the results were not compiled until after Kenny had retired. Wheelchair racer Tanni Grey-Thompson was given the title of Britain's most prolific Paralympian until the discovery of Kenny's successes. [6] Regarding Grey-Thompson, Kenny has said:
"It's been suggested I am annoyed because she has all the glory. But that's not true. She is a smashing ambassador for the Paralympic movement and I have never had a cross word with her in my life." [1]
Kenny has been a local magistrate in Salford, Greater Manchester since 1993. He initially applied to become a magistrate upon his retirement from sport in 1988, but had to wait four years for step-free access to be installed. Kenny received an MBE for his services to paraplegic sport at Buckingham Palace on 7 November 1989.
In 1973, Kenny started competing at national level, entering his first Paralympics in 1976 in Toronto. [2] He took part in three 25 m class 1A swimming events (backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle) winning gold in each of them and taking the world record in the freestyle and backstroke events. [7] [8] [9] He defended all three titles in 1980 and once again broke the freestyle and backstroke world records. [10] [11] [12] [13] In 1984 he again won gold in those three events, breaking the world records in each one. [14] [15] [16] He also won the 3 × 25 m individual medley and was part of the Great Britain relay team who won silver in the 3 × 25 m Free. Relay. [2] He repeated his successes in 1988 winning five individual golds and a relay silver but did not improve on his times and retired from competitive swimming after the Games. [2]
Matthew John Cowdrey is an Australian politician and Paralympic swimmer. He presently holds numerous world records. He has a congenital amputation of his left arm; it stops just below the elbow. Cowdrey competed at the 2004 Paralympic Games, 2006 Commonwealth Games, 2008 Paralympic Games, 2010 Commonwealth Games, and the 2012 Paralympic Games. After the 2012 London Games, he is the most successful Australian Paralympian, having won thirteen Paralympic gold medals and twenty three Paralympic medals in total. On 10 February 2015, Cowdrey announced his retirement from swimming.
Jessica Tatiana Long is a Russian-American Paralympic swimmer from Baltimore, Maryland, who competes in the S8, SB7 and SM8 category events. She has held many world records and competed at five Paralympic Games, winning 29 medals. She has won over 50 world championship medals.
Uri Bergman is an Israeli paralympic swimming champion. He competed at the 1976, 1980, and 1984, and 1988 Summer Paralympics.
Trischa Zorn is an American Paralympic swimmer. Blind from birth, she competed in Paralympic swimming. She is the most successful athlete in the history of the Paralympic Games, having won 55 medals, and was inducted into the Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2012. She took the Paralympic Oath for athletes at the 1996 Summer Paralympics in Atlanta.
Australia has participated officially in every Paralympic Games since its inauguration in 1960 with the exception of the 1976 Winter Paralympics.
Dame Sarah Joanne Storey, is a British cyclist and swimmer, a multiple gold medalist in the Paralympic Games, and six times British (able-bodied) national track champion. Her total of 28 Paralympic medals including 17 gold medals makes her the most successful and most decorated British Paralympian of all time as well as one of the most decorated Paralympic athletes of all time. She has the unique distinction of winning five gold medals in Paralympics before turning 19.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has participated in every summer and winter Paralympic Games.
Great Britain sent a delegation to compete at the 1972 Summer Paralympics in Heidelberg, West Germany. Teams from the nation are referred to by International Paralympic Committee (IPC) as Great Britain despite athletes from the whole of the United Kingdom, including those from Northern Ireland, being eligible. They sent seventy two competitors, forty seven male and twenty five female. The team won fifty-two medals—sixteen gold, fifteen silver and twenty-one bronze—to finish third in the medal table behind West Germany and the United States. Philip Craven, the former President of the IPC, competed in athletics, swimming and wheelchair basketball for Great Britain at these Games.
Shlomo Pinto was an Israeli paralympic champion.
Australia competed at the 1980 Summer Paralympics in Arnhem, Netherlands. It was the 6th Summer Paralympic Games in which Australia had competed. These Games were the biggest Paralympics yet, with 1,973 people participating. Of those participants, 57 were Australian. The team was made up of 45 men and 12 women, and was Australia's largest team to compete at any Paralympic Games so far.
Lynette Margaret "Lyn" Lillecrapp, OAM is an Australian Paralympic swimmer. She contracted paralytic polio at the age of two months. Lillecrapp started her competitive swimming career in 1974, and competed at the 1976 Toronto, 1988 Seoul and 1992 Barcelona Summer Paralympics.
Robert "Bob" Staddon is an Australian Paralympic swimmer who won three bronze medals at the 1984 New York/Stoke Mandeville Paralympics.
Michael Mike Quinn is an Australian Paralympic athletics, swimming and snooker competitor.
Paul Bird, OAM is an Australian athlete, swimmer, Paralympic gold and silver medalist, and sports administrator.
Stephanie Millward is a British Paralympic swimmer.
Monica Vaughan is a retired British athlete and multiple gold medal-winning paralympic swimmer. She was Britain's most successful Paralympian at the 1976 Games in Toronto, winning five gold medals in swimming and a silver medal as the only woman in the British volleyball team. She returned for the 1980 Games in Arhnem, winning a further four gold medals and a silver.
Tommy Taylor was a British Paralympic athlete who won sixteen medals across five sports, including ten gold medals. Taylor was treated by Ludwig Guttmann after an accident in 1956 caused severe paralysis. He went on to compete at numerous Paralympic Games, finding particular success in para table tennis from Rome 1960 to Arnhem 1980. Eight of Taylor's gold medals came in table tennis, along with one in snooker and one in lawn bowls.
Robin Hugh Surgeoner is a British retired swimmer. He won nine gold medals across three Paralympic Games competing as a British Paralympian in C4 events. Surgeoner was one of the original members of the British Paralympic Association committee. He now works as a swim coach, as an inclusion empowerment consultant and musician.
Kenneth Cairns MBE is a British swimmer who won five Paralympic gold medals across five Games, along with several world titles. He broke several records in swimming events, and was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2001 New Year Honours for services to disabled sports.
