Olympic Champion Matt Biondi

Matt Biondi is living proof that dreams do come true — provided you are willing to work long enough and hard enough to achieve them. Matt is one of only 10 modern Olympic athletes to win eight or more Olympic gold medals. He won eight Olympic gold medals, two Olympic silver medals, and one Olympic bronze medal.

Matt Biondi has also won six World Championship gold medals, two silver, and three bronze. In the Pan Pacific Games, Matt has won two bronze medals, three silver medals, and nine golds. That is a lot of medals and he deserves every one of them.

Matt has loved swimming since early childhood but he didn't start swimming seriously and year-round until he was in high school. By the time he graduated, he was considered the top schoolboy sprinter in America. He set a National High School record of 20.40 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle. That was the beginning of a long an medal-filled career.

After high school Matt was offered a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley, to swim and play water polo. The Berkeley swim team hrived with Matt as a member. Nobody expected it to happen, but Biondi qualified for a place on the 4 x 100 meter freestyle relay team for the 1984 Olympic Games that were held in Los Angeles, California. The U.S. team won the competition in record time and Matt was on his way to greatness.

When he swam with the 4 x 100 freestyle relay team in 1984, Matt hadn't yet graduated from college, so he returned to Berkeley.

Over the years, Biondi has set a total of 12 individual swimming records.

Biondi married Kristen in 1995 and today he lives in Kamuela, Hawaii. Matt teaches math, U.S. history, personal excellence, and swimming at Parker School, a small private prep school.

Olympic Champion Birgit Fischer

Birgit Fischer was born in what was then "East" Germany. The Berlin Wall was still in place, and east and west were firmly separated. Birgit is a kayaker who was an Olympic athlete for what was then East Germany in two Olympic Games. Then she was an Olympic athlete an astounding four additional times for Germany after East and West Germany were reunited.

What is even more amazing is that Birgit Fischer won her first Olympic gold medal in flatwater canoeing when she was just 18 years old in 1980 — but she won the last of her eight Olympic gold medals for flatwater canoeing in 2004 when she was 42 years old.

Birgit Fischer announced her retirement twice — once after the 1988 Olympics held in Seoul, Korea, where she won two gold medals; and again after the 2000 Olympics held in Sydney, Australia, where she also won two gold medals. After both these retirement announcements, she returned to competition. Once a competitive athlete, always a competitive athlete — or at least as long as it is possible to be a competitive athlete, and for Birgit Fischer, that time for competing lasted an amazing 24 years.

After the 2004 Olympic Games held in Athens, Greece, she was voted Sportswoman of the Year in Germany — a well-deserved honor.

In 1984 Birgit Fischer married Jörg Schmidt, who was also a canoeist. Sadly, the marriage didn't last and it ended in divorce in 1993. The couple had two children. Today Birgit Fischer lives in Brandenburg, Germany, with the two children. She likes to "dabble" in politics from time to time and even made an attempt to become a member of the European Parliament for the Free Democratic Party in 1999. Her bid for election was unsuccessful.

Birgit Fischer won a total of eight Olympic gold medals and four Olympic silver medals.