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1963-
Most versatile swimmer ever and winner of three Olympic gold medals.

Caulkins won five events at the '78 Worlds.  Paul Kennedy

Tracy Caulkins was eight when she agreed to join the neighborhood swim club with her older siblings on one condition: She would swim only the backstroke so she wouldn't have to get her face wet.

When Caulkins finally immersed herself in the pool, qualifying for the senior nationals at age 12, records began to fall. Caulkins won national titles in all four strokes -- freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly -- as well as the individual medley that combines all four. She set 63 American records and five world records and won 48 individual national titles.

At 14 Caulkins was a U.S. champion and at the 1978 world championships in Berlin she won five gold medals and a silver. The 1980 Olympics should have been her coronation, but the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games denied her a shot at Olympic glory. It was at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics that she finally garnered the one honor that had eluded her, winning gold medals in the 200- and 400-meter individual medley and swimming the breaststroke leg of the victorious women's medley relay.

Caulkins, who now lives in Brisbane, Australia, with husband Mark Stockwell (a silver medalist in the 100 free in '84) and four-year-old twins Maddison and William, retired from competition after the '84 Games with a legacy of swimming supremacy that, even today, remains unmatched.

--Richard Deitsch

Athletes were selected by Sports Illustrated For Women, Sports Illustrated and CNN/SI editors, writers and correspondents who considered the athletes' on-field performance and achievements, plus their contributions to women's sports. Because athletic achievement was a key criterion, women whose contributions were made solely in administration and coaching are not included.

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