Adrian David Moorhouse MBE[1] (born 24 May 1964) is an English former competitive swimmer who dominated British swimming in the late 1980s.

He was voted Best Leader at the Sunday Times Best Small Companies to Work for in 2009 and 2007 and has been listed in HR Magazine's Most Influential UK Thinkers since 2010.

[5] Moorhouse's inspiration to become seriously involved in national and international competitive swimming came at the age of 12 when he watched David Wilkie win gold at the Montreal Olympics.

I didn't want anything to do with swimming.” On New Year's Eve 1984, Moorhouse stayed home alone to reflect and decided to train for a competition in April 1985 as a 'last roll of the dice' to see whether he had what it took to conquer the world.

However, he put his disappointment behind him to turn the tables on Davis in the 200m breaststroke a few days later, an event in which the Canadian had been heavily favoured as the reigning Olympic Champion and world record holder.

[14] (FINA, swimming's world governing body, changed the breaststroke rules in 2005 to permit a single dolphin kick at the start and turn in recognition of the fact that this is often an unintended and involuntary reaction to the underwater pullout.

[18][19] Moorhouse started Olympic year, 1988, on the right note by winning the 100 m breaststroke at the US Indoor Championships to confirm his status as number one in the world.

In September he achieved a lifetime's ambition at Seoul when, following in the footsteps of David Wilkie and Duncan Goodhew, he won Olympic gold in the 100 m breaststroke in a time of 1:02.04, overtaking Dmitry Volkov (URS) and Károly Güttler (HUN) at the wall, in a characteristic finishing surge, to win by 1/100 of a second in the closest race of those Olympics.

Notably, he broke the record set by Steve Lundquist in the 1984 Olympics, in the lane adjacent to Moorhouse, adding extra significance to his achievement.

However, due to the host city Perth (AUS) being in the Southern Hemisphere, the World Championships were postponed until January 1991 to coincide with summer.

Here, Moorhouse swam another fantastic time of 1:01.58 but had to settle for silver behind a new world record and breakthrough performance from Hungary's Norbert Rózsa.

Later in 1991, he again took silver behind Norbert Rózsa in the European Championships in Athens in a time of 1:01.89,[23] his final major medal and his fifth consecutive podium placing in this event.

[24] In the late 1980s, Adrian Moorhouse was one of Britain's most successful sportspeople, finishing as runner-up in the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year contest in 1988 following his Olympic win.

His achievements continued the tradition of successful British men's breaststroke swimming that had started with Olympic golds from David Wilkie in 1976 and Duncan Goodhew in 1980.

Having had severe tonsillitis just days before the start of the Games, he finished fourth in the 100 m and sixth in the 200 m. Davis, now at the pinnacle of his swimming career, was voted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame.

TV crews from around the world began to analyse the footage of the 'illegal turn' from all conceivable angles, but each time it looked perfectly sound.