Sport: One-Girl Swim

The freckled 15-year-old blonde gripped the starting block with her toes, inhaled deeply, and hit the water at the gun with long, smooth strokes. When she flashed home last week in 4:55.9 for the 400 meters, Chris von Saltza of Saratoga, Calif, had broken her U.S. record by 2.2 sec., neatly finished the job of turning Chicago’s Pan-American Games into a one-girl swim. In all, Chris carried off five gold medals: she won the 100, 200 and 400 meters, was a member of the winning team in the 400-meter freestyle relay and the 400-meter medley. What was more, all of the times were Pan-American records.

To make her 400-meter victory even sweeter, Chris beat her great home-state rival, Berkeley’s husky, 17-year-old Sylvia Ruuska (TIME, Mar. 9) by a full 7.5 sec., established herself as the most promising U.S. freestyler in years. Even so, Chris is still far from her peak. A leggy 5 ft. 10 in., 141 lbs., she is still filling out, should be faster yet in the Rome Olympics next August against the great Australians. Beyond that, her future seems unlimited to her coach, George Haines. “If Chris can keep interested in swimming, she could hit fantastic marks by 1964,” he says, then adds almost wistfully: “But she’s a straight-A student, and she is already thinking of college.”