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Summer Elisabeth Sanders (born October 13, 1972; Roseville, California) is a sports commentator and reporter, TV show host, actress and retired Olympic gold medalist in swimming.
School and swimming
Sanders attended Cavitt Junior High School, Bishop Donahue High School and Oakmont High School in Roseville, California.
She first came to the attention of the swimming world in 1988 when she barely missed a spot on the 1988 U.S. Olympic team. She won three gold medals at the 1990 Goodwill Games before embarking on her collegiate career at Stanford University. In two years at Stanford, she compiled six individual NCAA titles and four relay championships. Sanders earned back-to-back NCAA Swimmer of the Year awards and propelled Stanford to a national championship in 1992. She also played basketball.
At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, she won gold medals in the 200-meter butterfly and in the 400-meter medley relay. She also won a silver medal in the 200-meter individual medley and a bronze medal in the 400-meter individual medley. Her individual performances in Barcelona were identical to those a year earlier at the 1991 swimming and diving world championships in Perth, Australia. Retiring after the Barcelona Olympics, Sanders later attempted to make the 1996 Olympic team but failed to qualify.
Television work
Sanders began working on television even before her competitive career ended. In 1992 and 1994 she was a commentator for CBS Sports for the NCAA Swimming Championships, and from 1993-1994 was a reporter for that networks skiing program Bumps & Jumps. In 1996, she was a commentator for NBC's coverage of the swimming events at the Atlanta Olympics, and contributed to the network's coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City as an on-site reporter. She was also the host of Scholastic at the Olympic Games on MSNBC in 2000. Nickelodeon named her their "commissioner" for the Nick GAS channel in 1998, after being the first female host of a Nickelodeon game show, Figure It Out (1997-2000).[1]
Sanders' basketball work includes being a sideline reporter for the WNBA (Lifetime – 1997-1999, NBC – 1999-2002) and a feature correspondant for NBA on NBC from 2000-2002, while in tennis she was a reporter for USA's coverage of the U.S. Open in 2000 and 2001, and co-host of CBS' coverage of "Arthur Ashe Kid's Day" at the Open from 2000 to 2006. From 2000 to 2004, she was a special correspondent for NBC's Today Show.[1]
Sanders has hosted a number of TV programs. In 1994, she was the co-host for MTV's Sandblast. Since then, she has hosted NBA Inside Stuff (1998-2005), the syndicated series US Olympic Gold (2002-2005), Beg, Borrow & Deal (ESPN, 2003), NBA TV's Mind, Body & Spirit (2003-2004)[1] and The Sports List (Fox Sports Net, 2004-2005).[2] Sanders also co-hosted the Fox celebrity reality series Skating With Celebrities in 2006.
Sanders began hosting Inside Out with Summer Sanders, in 2009. The show, which is the first original production of Universal Sports, debuted on December 23, 2009, and focuses on in-depth interviews and intimate profiles of notable Olympic athletes.[3] She is also a correspondant for Universal Sports for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and a general correspondant for Good Morning America and Rachael Ray.[1]
It was recently announced that she would be joining the third season of Celebrity Apprentice, along with Darryl Strawberry, Cyndi Lauper, Bret Michaels, Sharon Osbourne, Michael Johnson, Holly Robinson Peete, Bill Goldberg, Carol Leifer, Sinbad, Rod Blagojevich, Maria Kanellis, Curtis Stone and Selita Ebanks, who will all be competing for charity.[4]
Other media
Sanders has appeared as an actress in two films: Broken Record (1997) and Jerry Maguire (1996), in which she played herself.[5]
In June 1999, she published the book Champions Are Raised, Not Born: How My Parents Made Me A Success.[6]
Personal life
On July 4, 1997, Sanders married Mark Henderson, who was also an Olympic swimmer.[7] The couple divorced in 2001. In July 2005, she married Erik Schlopy, a World Cup skier who competed at the Torino 2006 Olympics. Their first child, a daughter named Skye Bella, was born April 21, 2006. They welcomed their second child, Robert Charles Spider Schlopy, on January 15, 2008.
On Saturday, June 9, 2007, Sanders' childhood home was destroyed by fire.[8]
Sanders is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for the United States, named in 1996, and serves on the national advisory board of Positive Coaching Alliance.
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