KAZAN, Russia — ′The 5-foot-11 teenage freestyler with the reserved personality and the swimming range of an albatross won every world championships final from the 200 meters through the 1500, thrilling the crowds inside the stadium while gun-toting soldiers patrolled the outside.
Forty years before Katie Ledecky rocked Kazan Arena while troops kept the peace outside, the aquatics world strained for superlatives to describe the performance in Colombia of Tim Shaw. His ease in the water was surpassed only by his unease in the spotlight, as he conveyed in 1975 in a sentiment that could have been uttered by Ledecky when he told reporters in Cali, “I don’t want to be singled out as anybody special.