Greg Louganis

Gregory "Greg" Efthimios Louganis (born January 29, 1960) is an American Olympic diver and author. He received the James E. Sullivan Award from the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) in 1984 as the most outstanding amateur athlete in the United States. Louganis is of Samoan/Swedish descent. He was raised in California by his adoptive parents, a Greek-American couple. He attended Santa Ana High School and Valhalla High School in El Cajon, California. At sixteen Louganis took part in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, where he placed second in the tower event, behind Italian sport legend Klaus Dibiasi. Two years later, with Dibiasi retired, Louganis won his first world title in the same event. In 1978, he accepted a diving scholarship to the University of Miami where he studied theater, but in 1981 transferred to the University of California, Irvine, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts.