George Hodgson: Wikis

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Categories: Anglophone Quebec people > People from Montreal > Sportspeople from Quebec > Olympic gold medalists for Canada > Swimmers at the 1912 Summer Olympics > Olympic swimmers of Canada > Canadian swimmers > 1956 deaths > 1893 births

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Updated live from Wikipedia, last check: June 01, 2012 17:38 UTC (42 seconds ago)

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Men’s Swimming Competitor for Canada
Olympic medalist
Hodgson in 1912
Medal record
Gold	1912 Stockholm	400 m freestyle
Gold	1912 Stockholm	1500 m freestyle

George Ritchie Hodgson (October 12, 1893 – May 1, 1983) was a Canadian swimmer of the early 20th century, and considered by many to be the greatest swimmer in Canadian history.

He was born and died in Montreal.

Hodgson won the two longer freestyle swimming gold medals at the 1912 Olympics, the only categories in which he competed, and was undefeated in his professional career.

1 Personal life
2 Professional career
3 Records
- 3.1 Olympic records
4 External links

Personal life

George Hodgson was born in 1893 in Montreal, Canada. He matriculated at McGill University in 1912, competing in swimming and water polo for the school. While there, he was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity, and graduated with a baccalaureate in Applied Science in 1916. He was inducted into the Canadian Amateur Sports Hall of Fame in 1949, the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1968, into the McGill University Sports Hall of Fame in 1996, and died in Montreal in 1983.

Professional career

George Hodgson, Canada's only Olympic gold medal winner in swimming till 1984, did not stay in competition very long, but during the 3 years he swam, he never lost a race, including the two gold medals he won at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, with times of 5:24.4s in the 400 meter and 22:00.0s in the 1500 meter freestyle. He had already set a world record of 22:23.0 in the first round of the race. He was eighteen at the time and retired immediately after one of the great races of all time. His unprecedented success was widely attributed to his innovation of the trudgen stroke, a hybrid between the front crawl and sidestroke.

It was for the 1500 meter Olympic championship and Hodgson broke world and Olympic records for 1000 yards and meters, and 1 mile in addition to the prescribed 1500 meter race distance. His Olympic record at 400 meters stood until 1924 when Johnny Weissmuller broke it at Amsterdam. He was Canada's lone swimmer in 1912.