Bill Mulliken, Who Swam to Olympic Gold in 1960, Dies at 74

Bill Mulliken, a little-known college swimmer who outpaced national champions and the world-record holder in the 200-meter breaststroke to win gold in the 1960 Olympic Games, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 74.

He died after having a stroke, his wife, Lorna Filippini-Mulliken, said.

Mulliken, who won the 200-meter breaststroke at the Pan-American Games in 1959, was a student at Miami University in Ohio when he went to Rome for the Summer Games. He was ranked 17th in the event, well below stars like Yoshihiko Osaki of Japan, Georgi Prokopenko of the Soviet Union and Terry Gathercole of Australia, who held the world record in the event.

Even Mulliken’s father held out little hope, Mulliken told The Chicago Sun-Times in 2004.

“My dad had made this comment to me: ‘It really would be good if you could beat one Russian,’ ” he recalled.

Mulliken beat Prokopenko in the semifinals, setting an Olympic record at 2 minutes 37.2 seconds. He went on to face the heavily favored Osaki in the finals.

“We all kind of assumed that Osaki was going to rule the day,” Mulliken said. “Coming off the third turn, headed home, I realized I could not only beat the guy but I could probably break the world record.”

He beat Osaki by six-tenths of a second with a time of 2:37.4, short of the world record. He was the first American swimmer to win the event since Joe Verdeur won at the 1948 Games in London. Other American gold medalists in 1960 included the sprinter Wilma Rudolph and the boxer Cassius Clay (the future Muhammad Ali).

William Danforth Mulliken was born on Aug. 27, 1939, in Urbana, Ill. He graduated from Miami in 1961 and received a law degree from Harvard.

His marriage to Julia N. Neavolls ended in divorce.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters, Cynthia Lazzara and Julia DeNapoli, and a son, John, from his first marriage; a sister, Sallie Olsen; a brother, John; and six grandchildren.