Franziska van Almsick (born 5 April 1978 in East Berlin, Germany) is a German swimmer. She won her first Olympic medals in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympic Games aged fourteen.
Her career begun at the SC Dynamo Berlin. She has the distinction of having the most career Olympic medals without ever winning a gold medal. Over her career, Van Almsick won ten Olympic medals, none of them gold. She ended her career at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004.
In 1993, she was named by Swimming World magazine as the Female World Swimmer of the Year. Her son Don Hugo was born on 7 January 2007.
Famous quotes containing the word van:
“I passed a tomb among green shades
Where seven anemones with down-dropped heads
Wept tears of dew upon the stone beneath.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)