Obituaries: Karen Muir: SA girl who stunned swimming world

Karen Muir, who has died in Mossel Bay in the Western Cape at the age of 60, was a legendary South African swimmer who conquered the world and retired before she was 18.
She was only 12 when she announced her arrival on the world stage with a stunning , and unexpected, performance at the British Amateur Junior Championships in Blackpool. Here, on August 10 1965, she became the youngest person in history to break a sporting world record in any discipline when she shaved seven-tenths of a second off Linda Ludgrove's 110yards backstroke world record. Muir clocked a time of 1 minute 8.7seconds and became an international swimming sensation. Just for good measure, she won the 110yards and 220yards freestyle at the British championships as well.
Her achievement came as a surprise to the South African Swimming Union, which had sent her to the UK to get a taste of international competition.
Over the next four years she was the fastest female backstroke swimmer in the world, setting 15 world records for backstroke over 110 yards (100m) and 220 yards (200m). She also set a world best in the 440yards individual medley. She won 22 South African championships, as well as multiple national championships in the US and Britain.
Her performances were all the more remarkable given that she lived in a comparative backwater, from a world swimming point of view, and trained pretty much in isolation. Every time she wanted to compete at her level she had to travel thousands of kilometres to do so, which was not only difficult financially, but meant taking time off school.
The Olympic sports boycott imposed on South Africa in 1964 because of apartheid ensured that the best female backstroke swimmer in the world for most of that decade never competed at the Olympic Games.
But her status as the best was never forgotten and in 1980 she was inducted into the International Hall of Fame in Florida in the US, the first South African swimmer to achieve this.
Muir was born in Kimberley on September 16 1952 and attended Hoërskool Diamantveld. She was determined to be a medical doctor and retired from competitive swimming in her matric year, 1970, to focus on her studies. She studied medicine at the University of the Free State and became a family doctor. In 2000 she emigrated to British Columbia in Canada. In 2009 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. When she was given months to live, she returned to South Africa.
Throughout her swimming career, Muir remained shy and unassuming in spite of her fame. Because of this, international sports writers nicknamed her the "Timid Torpedo".
When she settled in the small town of Vanderhoof in British Columbia, she never let on that she had once been a world champion swimmer. It was only when other South African doctors spread the word that townsfolk realised how famous the self-deprecating general practitioner in their midst once was.
Muir married a medical doctor and had four children.
