Kornelia and the East German team came to our pool at Pointe-Claire (Montreal) just before the 76 Olympics. It was kind of Rocky IVish.
I saw two of her gold medal victories that summer at the Olympics.

Tough call and it depends to some extent on whether you value greatness in 1 or 2 events, or versatility in setting records in all 4 strokes plus of course IM. Tracy Caulkins remains the only swimmer, M or F, to set American records in all 4 strokes plus both IM events, and she set a total of 63 ARs. She set ARs in:100/200/500 free, 100/200 breast, 100/200 fly, 100/200 back, and 200/400 IM, which is 11 out of the 14 swim events, i.e., she only missed setting records in the 50, 1000, and 1650 free. Not even Phelps has matched her versatility (MP has no back or breast records) nor her 63 ARs. Now Tracy only set 5 WRs but this was mainly due to the doped up East German women who dominated the pool in her era (1977-84). Granted, Mary T's 2 WRs in the 100/200 fly stood a lot longer than Tracy's records did but, in terms being the best all-round swimmer, Tracy seems a shoe-in IMO.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

While I don't think Missy is "the most dominant of all time", she certainly warrants a mention in this thread! She was America's sweetheart athlete in the 2012 Games, while at the same time kicking all sorts of ass.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

another name that could have been considered would be Shirley Babashoff, considering the GDR doping....not the best, but one of those in consideration.... good article here:

https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/...doping-of-olympians/

Without Ledecky, the past few years have been the best women's distance has ever been- Adlington finally took down Janet Evans' 800 free WR in Beijing; the Lioness of Verona has been so good for so long, still has the 200 free WR, and has also had the rare sub-4:00 400 free long course; Lotte Friis and Lauren Boyle have both gone under Kate Ziegler's old 1500M free world record; the late Camille Moffat was Laire Manaudou's logical heir in French swimming.

And then a promising 15 year old shows in in London, shocks the world in the 800 free, taking down the World Record holder in the process, and four years into an international career, is undefeated in Olympic, World Championship, and Pan Pacific finals at distances ranging from 200 to 1500 meters. The only thing keeping her from being undefeated in international team competiton period was a bad swim in the 400 free at Duel in the Pool in, I think, 2012 when she got sick as a dog on the flight to Scotland. She had to scratch the 800 free because of illness but gutted out a win in the 200 free.

That's Ian Thorpe level of dominance. Which is better than Michael Phelps level because Phelps actually lost a fair number of big boy races in between Olympic domination. Sometimes it was because he was trying to stretch to a different event; sometimes it was just because the other guy was better that year.

FWIW, Swimswam reader poll voted Mary T's 2:05 to be more impressive than Ledecky's 8:06 by a whopping 3.8% margin....

https://swimswam.com/swimswam-pulse-meaghers-205-voted-impressive-ledeckys-806/

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

'

Janet's 'close competition' was all those 'juiced up' East Germans who had taken juicing to a whole new level. Without their Androgen use, Janet would have left them many seconds behind.

But, I'm voting for Dawn Fraser, just 'cuz I'm old enough to have seen her swim, albeit on TV.

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_________________
Dick

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I know nothing.

Hard to go past Shane Gould. Has any other female held the world record across such a broad spectrum of distances at the one time?

I mean come on.
100
200
400
800
1500(?)
Katie is probably someone who could do all bar the 100 but I think Shane also had the 200IM (maybe that was just an Oly medal??)
Anyway, she was certainly a swimmer who was way ahead of her time.

Interestingly, here in Aust, Dawn Frazer is considered the queen due to her dominance in the 100 free over 3 olympics