Geoff Huegill

Geoffrey Andrew Huegill (born 4 March 1979) is an Australian swimmer and dual Olympian who won seventy-two international medals, including two medals in Olympics and six world champion titles, throughout his career. He held eight world records, including 50 metres butterfly.

Huegill has been recognised as technically the best butterflier and was the dominant butterfly champion during the early 2000s.

Affectionately known as 'Skippy', he is the nation's favourite comeback kid. Huegill came out of retirement in 2008 and shed 45 kilograms of weight to fight his way back to competition and was declared a national hero when he won gold at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games in the 100 metre butterfly. He won the race in 51.69 seconds and broke the Commonwealth games record and his own ten-year-old personal best time.

In 2010, he was voted Australian Sport Performer of the Year.

Huegill was born on 4 March 1979 in Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula in the Northern Territory. His mother, Kanthong Jum Summart, is from Chaiyaphum, Thailand while his father, Ronald Huegill, was a miner. Huegill grew up in Mackay and has an older brother, Graeme.

Huegill attended Southern Cross Catholic College in Scarborough, Queensland. In July 2013, he was awarded an honorary master's degree in sports science with high class honors from Central Queensland University.

Huegill started swimming in Mackay and showed talent from an early age. He joined coach Ken Wood’s squad on invitation, at the age of 11. After the death of his father due to a heart attack, Geoff started to live with his coach permanently.

In 1996, Huegill burst onto the international stage at the Mare Nostrum tour. The same year, at the age of 17, he broke the first of his many world records as part of a FINA sanctioned medley relay time trial in Melbourne, Australia.