Kim Herford

Swimming

Kim Herford taught herself to swim at the age of 2 and began competing at the age of 5, spurred on by her father Sam who was a swimming coach and ran The Spit Baths. Kim was a member of the Spit club from the age of 3 and was at the top of club, interclub and school competition.

Kim comes from a successful swimming family. Her father won many State and Australian titles in the 1930s and coached many Australian Olympians including gold medallists John Devitt and Murray Rose. Kim's mother, formerly Thora Dennis, was once Australian junior swimming champion and an Australian freestyle record holder. Her aunt, Clare Dennis, was world breaststroke champion in 1932 and held the world and Olympic records for 200m breaststroke. Her brother was stroke for the Australian Olympic coxed fours in Tokyo in 1964.

Kim was also selected to represent Australia at the Tokyo Olympic Games. She won her heat of the 400m freestyle, breaking an old Olympic record in the process. Kim swam 4 minutes 49.8 seconds to better the previous Olympic record of 4 minutes 50.6 seconds established by American Chris Von Saltza at Rome.

Kim also cut 3.8 seconds off the Queensland 400m freestyle record set by Dawn Fraser in 1961, after recovering from a car accident in which she broke her pelvis and only trained for two months.

In 1966 she went onto compete in the 400m at the Commonwealth Games in Jamaica and won a bronze medal.