Nicole Haislett

American swimmer

Nicole Lee Haislett (born December 16, 1972) is an American former competitive swimmer who was a three time Olympic gold medalist, a former world and American record holder, and an eight time American national college champion. During her international swimming career, Haislett won twenty two medals in major international championships, including fourteen golds.

Haislett was born in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1972. She was a "water baby"—she learned to swim at 18 months old. At the time, her parents merely wanted her to be comfortable in water, not intending that swimming would become her life focus. Haislett attended Lakewood High School in St. Petersburg, where she swam for the Lakewood Spartans high school swim team, winning four Florida high school state championships in two years. As a 16 year old high school junior, she won the 50 , 100 and 200 meter events at the U. S. Open Swimming Championships in 1989. At the 1990 U. S. Short Course Swimming National Championships, she won the national title in the 200 yard freestyle.

After graduating from high school, Haislett accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, As a Gator swimmer, she won NCAA national titles in the 200 yard freestyle for four consecutive years from 1991 to 1994, the 200 yard individual medley in 1993, and the 500 yard freestyle in 1994, and was a member of the Gators' NCAA winning relay teams in the 4×100 yard freestyle in 1993 and the 4×100 yard medley relay in 1994.

Haislett was the first American woman to defeat a swimmer from East Germany in the 100 meter freestyle since the 1972 Summer Olympics; she did so at the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle, Washington. At the 1991 World Aquatics Championships in Perth, Western Australia, Haislett won the 100 meter freestyle, and swam the anchor legs for the winning U. S. teams in the 4×100 meter freestyle and the 4×100 meter medley relays, ending the East German women's eighteen years of overwhelming dominance in the 100 meter freestyle at the world championships. Haislett also endured the emotional agony of disqualifying her team on an early exchange in the 4×200 meter freestyle relay – a relay race that the American women won in the water. Haislett qualified for four events at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. After finishing a disappointing fourth in the women's 100 meter freestyle, Haislett won the 200 meter freestyle event with a time of 1:57.90 for her first Olympic gold medal. Drafting off German swimmer Franziska Van Almsick, she swam what was described as a "perfect race." Haislett swam the freestyle leg in the preliminaries of the 4×100 meter medley relay to earn her third Olympic gold medal.

Haislett graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor's degree in telecommunications in 1996, and served as an assistant coach for the Florida Gators women's swim team under head coach Kevin Thornton from 1996 to 1997. Afterward, she studied to be a chef at the Florida Culinary Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida, and subsequently worked as the dining room manager and activities director at an assisted living community for seniors. She was inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Gator Great" in 2004, and the Florida Sports Hall of Fame in 2005. Haislett and her ex husband have a daughter, Blake, who was born in 2006.