Sidney Swann

Sidney Swann, drawing by Wallace Hester (1912)

Sidney Ernest Swann (born June 24, 1890 in Sulby , Isle of Man , † September 19, 1976 in Minehead ) was a British rower who won two Olympic medals.

After attending rugby school , Sidney Swann moved to Cambridge to Trinity College . As a rower, he took part in the Boat Race three times with Cambridge from 1911 to 1913 , but lost each time to Oxford. Swann was also a member of the Leander Club and was one of the eight that the club sent to Stockholm for the 1912 Olympic Games . The eighth of the Leander Club won in the preliminary round against the eighth of the Toronto Argonauts and in the quarterfinals against the Sydney Rowing Club . After the semi-final victory over the eighth of the Berlin rowing club in 1876 , the boat of the Leander Club met the boat from New College from Oxford in the final and won by three and a half seconds. In the final, Swann was the only representative from Cambridge alongside 17 members of Oxford University. At the Olympic Games in Antwerp in 1920 Swann reached the Olympic final again with the eighth of the Leander Club, but this time lost by 0.8 seconds against the eighth from the United States.

Swann came from a family of rowers; his father had also taken part in the boat race three times. In 1913 and 1914 Sidney Swann won the Henley Royal Regatta with his brother Arthur Swann in two without a helmsman . Sidney Swann also pursued a family tradition as a priest in the Church of England . From 1926 to 1933 he worked in Africa. In 1941 he became the court chaplain of King George VI.

Web links

• Sidney Swann in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

literature

• Karl Lennartz : The games of the 5th Olympiad in Stockholm in 1912 . Agon Sportverlag, Kassel 2009 ISBN 978-3-89784-364-6 pp. 232-235
• Karl Lennartz, Wolf Reinhardt, Ralph Schlueter: The games of the VII Olympiad 1920 in Antwerp . Agon Sportverlag, Kassel 2013 ISBN 978-3-89784-402-5 pp. 232-234