Although severely injured at the age of 12 when struck by a truck while riding a bicycle, Mike Burton recovered sufficiently to become one of the great distance freestylers ever. At the 1967 Pan American Games he won gold in 1500 m freestyle and bronze in 400 m freestyle and 200 m butterfly. He set seven world and 16 U.S. records, won 10 AAU titles, and while at UCLA he was five times an NCAA champion. Burton was the first man to break 16 minutes for the 1,650 y free and the first to swim 800 m under 8:30. He was also the first to follow the now standard training regimen of mega-mileage. The first man to win two Olympic 1,500 m freestyle titles, between those championships, he needed further surgery on his knee, a residual of his old injury.
Burton went into coaching, first leading the Des Moines Aquatics Club. He coached The Evergreen Swim Team in Olympia, WA through 1997, and later coached the Billings Seahawks in Montana until 2007. Burton was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1977, and is also a member of the UCLA Hall of Fame, and the Sacramento Sports Hall of Fame.
United States