Nearly 30 years ago, history was made in American women’s sports.

On July 25, 1996, Amy Van Dyken tore through the water of the 50-meter freestyle, having secured three gold medals in the previous days of the 1996 Olympics. Van Dyken finished the quick sprint, emerging from lane five to find that she had won first place by 0.03 seconds with a time of 24.87 seconds.

She walked away from her first-ever Olympics a winner and the first American woman athlete to win four gold medals in a single Games — a record that has been untouched since.

Going into the ‘96 Games, Sports Illustrated predicted Van Dyken would win, at most, one bronze medal. Since she was a young girl with asthma, she’s had physical restrictions placed on her; however, she knew from the start that she was capable of much more.

“Even as a kid, someone would tell me ‘No,’ and I’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, OK, I’m going to do it better than anyone’s ever done it because you told me not to,’” Van Dyken said. “I think it’s just being stubborn, … which is a good trait and a bad trait. But I wanted to do so well for my school and my team.”

After the 1996 Olympics, Van Dyken sustained a shoulder injury that required several major operations, costing her valuable training time. Meanwhile, her soon-to-be opponents were working intensively.

But the 2000 Olympics came — her second and final Olympic appearance — and Van Dyken tacked on two more gold medals. In the process, she joined a small, elite group of Olympians who have won solely gold medals.

However, in 2014, everything changed. 

In early June, Van Dyken went out riding with her husband in an ATV and hit a curb, which ejected her off a roughly six-foot drop, severing her spinal cord at a key vertebral bone. 

Years of kicking through the water and walking through life were suspended as she was rushed into surgery to stabilize her spine. After an unfavorable prognosis, she was warned of her limits, but as Van Dyken pointed out: “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

She’s active on social media to this day, sharing her journey in a wheelchair, and has become a beacon of hope for a community that might not have always had one.

“It’s in yourself,” Van Dyken said. “You can’t look at anything and say, ‘Oh, that’s a detriment.’ No, it’s a blessing. Like, I even look at breaking my back and being in this wheelchair as a blessing because I’m learning things about myself. And I just think you can’t look at those things as a detriment. It’s part of you.”

Since retiring from swimming, Van Dyken remained in the sports industry as a reporter, becoming a role model for girls across the nation, as she was determined to cement her place in a male-dominated field.

“I never looked at myself as either a female or a male,” Van Dyken said. “I am (a) person in this industry, and just because you’re a guy doesn’t mean you’re better than me. And I know I have to work harder, and I’m going to take on that challenge, and I’m going to be the best out there — just like I did in the pool.”

After recovering, Van Dyken was right back to her usual grind, and 24 years after retiring from swimming and diligence with sports media, she earned an Emmy Award for her work with the NBCUniversal broadcast team at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

But before the Olympics, the worldwide fame and an Emmy award, there was Van Dyken, a swimmer from Denver, Colorado, who had just transferred to Colorado State University from the University of Arizona, with 12 All-American awards under her belt.

Van Dyken went from someone learning how to grow into an adult to having her legacy forever ingrained in the halls of Moby Arena.

“I still, every single day, remember to go to class,” Van Dyken said. “I remember to eat well, but also, it was just about how (to become) a young woman and how to become confident in your own body and in your own person. And that was hard for me. … I’m a little much for a lot of people. But you know what? It’s all good. (You have) got to be happy with yourself.”

In 2025, CSU Athletic Director John Weber announced the Ring of Honor, a group that represents the highest caliber of athletes to represent Athletics and recognize the legacy they left.

“It’s a really special moment for us to be able to really honor the people that made a huge difference for our programs,” Weber said in the press conference Aug. 6, 2025, when he announced the Ring of Honor. “We want to take the opportunity to honor them, thank them and recognize what they meant to this university and our programs.”

To this day, Van Dyken holds the school record for two different events. During her time as a Ram, she was named the NCAA’s Female Swimmer of the Year in 1994 and was later inducted into CSU’s Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 2001.

And all of those moments — the gold medals, the hours spent in the pool, the 2014 accident — led to her coming back to CSU to watch her banner unravel and hang forever, with one in Moby Arena and one in Moby Pool.

But as the first banner dropped, one memory stood out among the rest.

“I remember walking on the deck the first day coming in as a transfer, and (the team) just treated me like I was one of them and had been one of them forever,” Van Dyken said. “All of that came back, all the times, … and just all my women that I grew up with. … I was just thinking about my girls, my team.”

Although Moby Pool was once considered foreign, it became a home for Van Dyken.

And as future CSU swimmers race through the lanes, one name will always hang in the background: Amy Van Dyken. Even though she’s not always there, her connection to CSU is felt even in moments of absence. 

In 2023, Lexie Trietley broke Van Dyken’s Moby Pool record in the 50-yard freestyle by 0.14 seconds. After the fact, the two shared a conversation in which Van Dyken echoed the words of her former coach, John Mattos: Trust the process and keep working.

“One thing that John always told me, and I still live by it, is swim in your own lane lines,” Van Dyken said. “Meaning, you don’t look outside those lane lines for a name, for whatever may be bigger and better than you.”

And with a new generation of athletes remains the possibility of Van Dyken’s record being broken. Even in the Olympics, her record of four gold medals in one Olympic Games was matched by Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky — but never beaten.

“I had a lot of great success,” Van Dyken said. “But you know, there’s a lot of other women who are in this pool every single day working their (tails) off, and I hope that I can give them some of that recognition as well because everyone works so hard.”

Despite asthma preventing her from swimming the length of the pool until she was 12-years-old or a paralyzing accident, Van Dyken pushed the boundaries of what was possible. During her career in sports, she worked as a sideline reporter for the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos, was named ESPN’s 1997 ESPY Female Athlete of the Year, and now holds a position in the Olympic Hall of Fame.

“It’s so wild, like, it doesn’t even feel like it should happen, right?” Van Dyken said. “It doesn’t feel like it should be me, but it is, and it’s just crazy. This school has gone above and beyond for me, and I’m so grateful.”

Reach Sophie Webb at sports@collegian.com or on social media @sophgwebb.

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