The Most Famous
SWIMMERS from Nicaragua
This page contains a list of the greatest Nicaraguan Swimmers. The pantheon dataset contains 709 Swimmers, 1 of which were born in Nicaragua. This makes Nicaragua the birth place of the 36th most number of Swimmers behind Trinidad and Tobago, and Latvia.
Top 2
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Nicaraguan Swimmers of all time. This list of famous Nicaraguan Swimmers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Claudia Poll (b. 1972)
With an HPI of 39.45, Claudia Poll is the most famous Nicaraguan Swimmer. Her biography has been translated into 26 different languages on wikipedia.
Claudia María Poll Ahrens (born 21 December 1972) is a Costa Rican-Nicaraguan former swimmer who competed in the 200 m to 800 m freestyle events. She is Costa Rica's only Olympic gold-medalist, having won the country's first Olympic gold medals at the 1996 Olympics in the 200 meter freestyle. Claudia also competed at the 2000 Olympics, where she won two bronze medals. She is a multiple national record holder in the freestyle events. She is the first person from Central America to win an Olympic gold medal. She was the first to do so until the 2008 Olympic Games when long jump athlete Irving Saladino of Panama won a gold medal.
2. Silvia Poll (b. 1970)
With an HPI of 34.11, Silvia Poll is the 2nd most famous Nicaraguan Swimmer. Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.
Sylvia Úrsula Poll Ahrens (born September 24, 1970 in Managua, Nicaragua) is an Olympic medalist and a national record holding swimmer from Costa Rica. At the 1988 Olympics, she won Costa Rica's first Olympic medal, when she garnered the silver in the women's 200 free. As of 2009, she and her younger sister Claudia are Costa Rica's only Olympic medalists. Sylvia also swam for Costa Rica at the 1992 Summer Olympics. She also won a total number of 8 medals at the 1987 Pan American Games; and 2 of her times from those Games still stand as Costa Rican Records in 2009 (100 free and 100 back). Poll was born in Managua, Nicaragua. Her parents were Germans and they settled in Nicaragua where Sylvia and her younger sister Claudia were born. After the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake and rising political tensions, Sylvia's parents decided to move south to Costa Rica only shortly after Claudia's birth. She, her sister Claudia, and their mother are not related to Marlene Ahrens, another Olympic athlete and medalist and another Latin American-born daughter of German settlers. Sylvia Poll is a famous backstroker and freestyle swimmer for Costa Rica, who won the silver medal in the Swimming at the 1988 Summer Olympics Women's 200 meter freestyle at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Her silver medal was the first medal ever for a Costa Rican athlete. At the 1986 Central American and Caribbean Games she set the Games Records in the women's 200 and 400 frees (2:02.80 and 4:17.98). Both records would last 20 years, until her sister Claudia bettered the times at the 2006 Games. Also at the '86 CACs, Silvia set the Games Record in the 100 m and 200 m backstroke (1:04.43, 2:19.32) that also stood until 2006. Sylvia Poll is now a member of the ‘Champions for Peace’ club, a group of 54 famous elite athletes committed to serving peace in the world through sport, created by Peace and Sport, a Monaco-based international organization.
People
Pantheon has 2 people classified as Nicaraguan swimmers born between 1970 and 1972. Of these 2, 2 (100.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Nicaraguan swimmers include Claudia Poll, and Silvia Poll. As of April 2024, 1 new Nicaraguan swimmers have been added to Pantheon including Silvia Poll.
