The first Black swimmer to win an Olympic gold medal, Nesty is also the personal coach of some of the Americans’ best medal threats, including Katie Ledecky.
Coach Anthony Nesty watches as swimmers warm up at the U.S. Olympic trials last month. NANTERRE, France — On this business trip across the Atlantic where his mission is to marshal as many American swimmers as possible tomedal podium, Anthony Nesty is much more interested in making history than he is talking about it.
He doesn’t need to remind his swimmers that he knows what Olympic waters feel like, and he remembers how the nerves and excitement can wash over you on the starting block and how the elation of being the first to the wall sticks with you forever. Nesty, 56, is the rare swim coach who has won an Olympic medal of his own and still stands as one of the most celebrated underdog stories in Olympic lore.
He started to make up ground but was still more than a half body length behind Biondi with about 25 meters remaining. Nesty thought if he kept pushing, he could finish third, maybe second. He closed the gap in a matter of seconds. The result was stunning — “an almost obscure swimmer from an obscure nation” as the New York Times reported the next day. Olympic officials scurried to find the Suriname anthem to play for the medal ceremony, and reporters had to scramble to an atlas to learn about this country of about 380,000 people.Thirty-six years later, Nesty is understated when asked to look back on the significance of being the first Black swimmer to win Olympic gold.
Nesty returned to the 1992 Olympics and won bronze in the 100 fly. He retired not long after and went into coaching, eventually getting the Gators men’s job in 2006 and adding the women’s program in 2021.“What I’m most proud of is the improvement of the athletes, from year one to year two to year three,” Nesty said. “So I kind of made that my passion, and here we are, years later.”
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