Francis Gailey

Francis Gailey (21 January 1882 – 10 July 1972) was an Australian-born American competition swimmer who swam in the 1904 Summer Olympics held in St. Louis, Missouri.

[1] Gailey was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, but later emigrated to the United States and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1906.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially counts Gailey's four medals for the United States,[2] although research undertaken by several Australian newspapers in 2008–09 showed that Gailey was an Australian citizen at the time.

[4] At the 1904 Summer Olympics, Gailey competed in four swimming events, and due to the lack of entrants all the events were straight finals, on 6 September he entered the 220 yard freestyle, where he finished just under two seconds behind American Charles Daniels and gained a silver medal,[5] on the same day he also entered the 1 mile freestyle and after swimming for nearly 29 minutes he finished in third place behind German Emil Rausch and Hungarian Géza Kiss.

[6] The next day Gailey competed in his other two events the 440 yard freestyle, where again he finished second to Charles Daniels,[7] and then the German Emil Rausch beat him in the 880 yard freestyle,[8] so in his two days of events he finished with three silver medals and one bronze.