Mark Foster (swimmer)

Mark Andrew Foster ( born May 12, 1970 in Billericay, England ) is a British professional swimming.

Career

Mark Foster celebrated on the 50 -meter freestyle and 50 -meter butterfly route and especially on the short course his greatest successes.

The first time Foster was taken into account in Edinburgh at the age of 16 years from the English Commonwealth team for the Commonwealth Games 1986. There he won the 4 × 100 meter freestyle relay bronze medal.

His breakthrough came four years later, in 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, where the bronze in the 50m freestyle and thus his first individual medal at international championships won.

In the nineties of the 20th century, he improved the 50 meter freestyle short course world record four times and the 50 - meter butterfly short course world record twice.

Although Foster took five times at Summer Olympics in part but could never win an Olympic medal. In Seoul in 1988 he was on the 50 -meter freestyle 22 With the British 4 × 100 meter freestyle relay, he reached the final, where the seventh overall place.

In Barcelona in 1992, he already reached the 50 -meter freestyle final and was finally sixth. With the British 4 × 100 meter freestyle relay, it was enough, as in Seoul only for seventh overall place.

In Atlanta in 1996, he was on the 50 -meter freestyle track 16 and four years later at the Summer Olympics in Sydney in 2000, he reached over the same distance the seventh overall place.

In 2004 he finished although the British Olympic Trials for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens on the 50 -meter freestyle first, undercutting while the international qualification limit, but remained only seven hundredths of a second above the national limit, which he was not allowed to participate in the Games.

At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing Foster was given the honor to carry the British flag at the Olympic opening ceremony. In these games, he failed on the 50 -meter freestyle during preprocessing and was finally 22.

Actually Foster announced his retirement from competitive sports after the Short Course European Championships in Helsinki in 2006, but in 2007 he decided in 2008 in Manchester at the Short Course World Championships in their own country to be back and again start to win an Olympic medal in Beijing trying. In Manchester, Foster was again runner-up world champion 50 -meter freestyle. In Beijing, he came over the Heats in 50 -meter freestyle and was also not finally 23.

Media presence

Mark Foster took in 2008 in numerous British television shows part. Among other things, he formed together with the New Zealand professional dancer Hayley Holt, a couple in the sixth season of the British television dance show Strictly Come Dancing.