Kevin Berry
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Kevin John Berry | |||||||||||||||
| National team | Australia | |||||||||||||||
| Born |
10 April 1945 Sydney, New South Wales |
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| Died | 7 December 2006 (aged 61) Sydney, New South Wales |
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| Height | 1.72 m (5 ft 8 in) | |||||||||||||||
| Weight | 71 kg (157 lb) | |||||||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Swimming | |||||||||||||||
| Strokes | Butterfly, medley | |||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Kevin John Berry, OAM, (10 April 1945 – 7 December 2006) was an Australian butterfly swimmer of the 1960s who won the gold medal in the 200-metre butterfly at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. He set twelve world records in his career. After his swimming career ended, he became the Pictorial Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and later the head of ABC Sport.
Berry, the second of seven children, was born in Sydney and grew up in the western suburb of Marrickville, in a family with no prior sporting background. His father Frederick had arrived in Australia in the 1920s and had worked as a bar manager to support the family. He was taught to swim by his elder sister Colleen along with his younger siblings at Botany Bay. His younger brother Paul was a promising youth swimmer who defeated dual Olympic gold medallist Michael Wenden, and later became a professional rugby league player. Berry was educated at De La Salle College, and represented the school in athletics and rugby league, with moderate success. Berry joined the Pyrmont Club, which trained at Victoria Park Swimming Pool, under Eric Hayes, and swam from 1956 until 1958 as a freestyler, with reasonable age group success. In 1958 he won a butterfly race, and despite winning more races, Hayes did not think that he was suited to butterfly. Berry switched coaches to Don Talbot, training at Bankstown, New South Wales by the end of the year.
In 1959, at the under-14 New South Wales Championships, Berry came first, second and third in the breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly respectively. Talbot encouraged him, predicting that he would do well the following year. Berry's parents were surprised when Talbot told them at the end of the year that Berry had a chance of making the 1960 Summer Olympics team for Rome, even though he had never entered an Australian Championship before. At the end of the year, he came second to Neville Hayes, a fellow Talbot swimmer, defeating Harry Turner, who had been expected to be Australia's second butterflier at the Olympics.
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