John Ferris, Sacramento swimmer and Olympic medalist, dies at 71

John Ferris, a Sacramento-born athlete and a swimmer at Arden Hills Swim Club who went on to compete in the 1968 Summer Olympics along with other California natives and took home two bronze medals, has died. He was 71.

Swimming World Magazine, first reported the news of Ferris’ death, said he died Sept. 13 of lung cancer in Walnut Creek.

The Olympian was born in Sacramento on July 24, 1949, to an athletic family. He, along with his two sisters, Carolyn and Joan, trained at the Arden Hills Swim Club under Sherm Chavoor, who founded the club in 1954. Chavoor also mentored Mark Spitz, Debbie Meyer and Mike Burton, three Olympic medalists who competed in the summer 1968 games alongside Ferris.

“I was in awe of him,” Meyer recalled, saying that although their three-year age difference meant they weren’t particularly close — Meyer was a freshman at Rio Americano High School when Ferris was a senior there — he already cut an imposing figure as an elite swimmer.

Meyer remembers Ferris’ devil-may-care attitude best. She carpooled with Ferris to swim practices one summer, and he liked to skid around in the car, doing donuts on the street by his house.

“Johnnie lived the life he wanted to lead. He lived on the edge and pushed the envelope,” Meyer said. “But he was the nicest guy.”

Burton remembers Ferris as clever and funny, but also gracious. During a competition in 1970 that pitted the two against each other, Burton inched ahead and beat him out. On the awards stand, Ferris turned to him and told him, “you’re amazing.”

“He was just a great kid to be around,” Burton said. “We had a ton of fun together.”

Ferris graduated high school 1967 and left Sacramento to join Stanford University’s class of 1973. There, he swam for the Stanford Men’s Swimming and Diving team, competing in NCAA tournaments for the school.

In 1967, he swam in Tokyo’s Summer Universiade, an international competition between college athletes of multiple disciplines. The United States dominated the games, seconded by Japan, and Ferris took home two medals and a world record.

Taking just 2 minutes and 6 seconds to complete the 200-meter butterfly stroke — the same stoke he would later use to win an Olympic medal — Ferris briefly managed to unseat Modesto native Mark Spitz as the world record holder and earned a gold medal for his efforts. Spitz had previously set the record at 2:06.4.

His time as world record holder was brief, however, as Spitz managed to shave down his time on the 200-meter butterfly to 2:05.7 just 39 days later.

Ferris also won a silver medal at the 1967 Summer Universiade for is 400-meter individual medley, which he completed in 4:57.7.

Then in 1968, when he was just 19 years old, Ferris was selected to compete in the Mexico City Summer Olympics, often remembered for the iconic Black power salute of two American runners during their awards ceremony, but which also proved to be one of the United States’ best performances. The U.S. won more medals that year than any year up until 1984, aided by a swimming team that smashed the competition, winning nearly half of the country’s medals. U.S. swimmers won 52 of 87 available in that field, while the U.S. ended up taking home 107 Olympic medals overall out of 364 total.

Ferris won two bronze medals, one in the 200-meter butterfly stroke and another in the 200-meter individual medley, the latter of which was swept by American athletes.

“He should have won it,” Burton said.

Ferris had previously swam the 200-meter butterfly faster than the 2:09.3 time he placed with, but Burton said, the high elevation of Mexico City took a toll on everyone there. After swimming the 200-meter individual medley, Burton remembered seeing Greg Buckingham, who won a silver in that competition, helping to hold Ferris, out of breath and exhausted, up on the medalists’ podium as the Star Spangled Banner played.

Other notable Olympians that year included alumni of the Arden Hills Swim Club. Mark Spitz contributed to America’s victory with four medals. He won two gold medals for his 4x100-meter freestyle relay and his 4x200-meter freestyle relay, one silver for his 100-meter butterfly stroke and one bronze for his 100-meter freestyle. Mike Burton won two golds in the 400-meter freestyle and the 1500-meter freestyle. Meyer, who was just 16 years old and still attending Rio Americano High School, took home three gold medals in the women’s competition in the 200-meter freestyle, 400-meter freestyle and the 800-meter freestyle.

When Ferris, Meyer and other Sacramento-area athletes returned home after the games, a celebration was held downtown in their honor, Valley Community Newspapers reported.

“You have brought glory to Sacramento,” the city’s vice mayor Albert Talkin reportedly said. “We haven’t had anything like this since the Gold Rush. If people don’t know where Sacramento is now, they’ll never know.”

Meyer remembers the parade fondly. City residents popped out of office windows and appeared on the street to cheer them on.

“Sacramento was really well represented in ’68,” she said.

Ferris continued to compete in NCAA tournaments while he finished school at Stanford, winning one in 1969 for the 200-yard butterfly. After graduating in 1973, his career was eclectic and spanned continents, according to Swimming World Magazine. Among his endeavors were the founding of a youth hostel in the Czech Republic, investing in a Dutch botanists attempts to improve the preservation of flowers, teaching English to Russian youth in Moscow and publishing a nearly 400-page novel in 2005 that centered around an Olympic swimmer.