Gail Roper was fearful of making a scene.
Poised on the lip of a pool after swimming laps seven years ago, the former Olympic swimmer “knew something was wrong. It was like I was having an out-of-body experience. But it was scary.” She crawled out of the pool, rattled. A month later she experienced a second episode — her doctor later said her heart was beating irregularly. He suggested a pacemaker.
“I’m an athlete,” she said. “They’re for sick people.”
The now-80-year-old Roper, one of the world’s top female swimmers, seems an unlikely heart patient. The marine biologist from Healdsburg, Calif., swims at least three days a week and recently broke nine world swimming records. But it was the tiny device, the size of two quarters smushed together, that enabled her to continue her lifelong love affair with water.
“The doctor said if I didn’t get a pacemaker, I’d end up at the bottom of the pool,” she said.
Roper’s mother taught her to swim at the age of 2 in her hometown of Trenton, N.J., which hugs the swift-flowing Delaware River. Fearful that her daughter would be swept away by the river’s pull, she outfitted the toddler in a green-and-yellow bathing suit and taught her the basics.
Roper made the high-school swimming team at a time when girls were not encouraged to exercise.
“We were told if we swam more than a lap we would develop heart disease and our ovaries would burst, so we couldn’t have children,” she said. No coach would take her on (until later), so she studied swimming technique by reading books in the local library. The Delaware River became her swimming pool, and she became the state’s champion swimmer between 1948 and 1951.
She moved to the District of Columbia and began training with other women on the Walter Reed Hospital team, setting records in breaststroke, individual medley and 300-yard medley relays. In 1952, she became the U.S. national champion in the 100-yard and 200-yard breaststroke and the 200-yard individual medley.
Her talent attracted national attention: A 1952 Life magazine article described her as “scrawny” in a bathing suit and “anything but athletic” in her street clothes. In the water, though, “she looked wonderful,” the article gushed.
She qualified for the 1952 Olympic team and went to Helsinki, Finland, but did not make the finals. By 1953, she was considered the top female breaststroke swimmer in the world. But then, she quit swimming to become a wife and mother, and didn’t exercise for 20 years.
“I was a housebound housewife,” said the mother of seven and grandmother.
At 41, she resumed her passion, competing in contests sponsored by U.S. Masters Swimming. She now holds 103 world records and has been inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. She has traveled extensively, climbed 19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, and has swum across the Nile and Lake Pepin. The latter was “a highlight of my life.”
After eight decades, she has lost none of her competitive fire, and hopes to keep swimming and breaking records until she reaches the highest age bracket in Masters swimming, 105 to 109.
“I once read that the people most successful in sports are those who hate to lose,” she said.
