Shane Gould

After her 1972 Olympic performance, Gould was named the Australian of the Year, and received an MBE in 1981. In April 2018, Gould was awarded an Order of Merit by the Australian Olympic Committee. Gould returned in the 1990s as a swimming mentor and competitor, and again competed in 2003, specializing in the 200m Individual Medley. In 1999, she published her autobiography Tumble Turns. In 2018, she competed on Australian Survivor: Champions vs. Contenders and won, receiving $500,000 as the Sole Survivor. Gould later returned for Australian Survivor: All Stars, but was voted out first.

• Name — Shane Gould • Full Name — Shane Elizabeth Gould • Spouse — Neil Innes (1974) Milton Nelms (2007) • National Team — Australia • Strokes — Freestyle, medley • Club — Forbes Carlile Swimming • Coach — Forbes Carlile • Born — 23 November 1956 • Birthplace — Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Height — 1.71 m • Weight — 59 kg • Medal Templates — Women's swimming Olympic Games

Gould was born in Sydney, New South Wales, on the first day of competition of the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. She moved to Fiji with her family at the age of 18 months. By the age of six, she was a competent swimmer. She attended primary school at Brisbane's St. Peters Lutheran College, currently the top-rated swim school in Australia. At St. Peters, a sporting house is named after her. She attended secondary school at Turramurra High School, Sydney, where a sporting house is also named after her and fellow Olympian Gail Neall. From around February to June 1973, during her high school junior year, she attended St. Francis High School in Mountain View, California. While at St. Francis, she was coached by Hall of Fame Coach Nort Thornton with the Foothill Aquatics Club. While attending St. Francis, she planned to compete in the Santa Clara International Invitational in June, and Cincinnati's National AAU Championships in April. Two years earlier in the Santa Clara Invitational in July 1971 she set her third world record, lowering the previous mark in the 400-meter freestyle formerly set by Karen Moras in London a few months earlier.

Gould was trained by leading coaches Ursula and Forbes Carlile and their assistant Tom Green at the Forbes and Ursula Carlile Swimming Organization. She won all of her world swimming titles while a teenager, travelling widely. Carlile, a two-time Olympic Coach for Australia, was a physiologist at the University of Sydney, and at the forefront of providing scientific training to athletes. A leader in the use of interval workouts timed with pace clocks and in the use of heart rate tests for assessing effort, he helped popularize "tapering", a method that slowly reduced training intensity in the weeks before important meets to maximize performance. He helped develop the crawl stroke, focusing on a high speed two beat kick which emphasized the strong use of the arms, a technique studied and adopted by Gould.

• Illustration — Gould in 1972 At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, Gould won three gold medals in the 200 and 400-meter freestyle, and the 200-meter individual medley, setting a world record in each race. She won a silver in the 800 and a bronze in the 100-meter freestyle events. She is the only person, male or female, to hold 5 Long Course Meters world records simultaneously. She held every world freestyle record from 100 metres to 1500 metres from 12 December 71 to 4 August 72. On 4 August 1972 her world record in the 200 freestyle was broken at the United States Olympic trials. On 28 August 1972 she set the 200-metre individual medley world record bringing her active world records back to 5. She is the first female swimmer ever to win three Olympic gold medals in world record time, and the first swimmer, male or female, to win Olympic medals in five individual events in a single Olympics. She is also the only Australian to win three individual gold medals at a single Olympics. At the age of 16, she retired from competitive swimming, citing pressures placed upon her by her success and media profile. Over two decades later, Gould returned to competitive swimming at the Masters level. She set Australian Masters records (40–44 years 100m, 200 m, and 400 m freestyle, and 100 m butterfly) and 45–49 years (50 m butterfly, 100 m and 200 m freestyle). In 2003, she broke the world record for the 45–49 years 200 m individual medley in 2:38.13 (beating the 1961 world record for all ages). She coaches swimmers and still swims in Masters competitions.

Gould returned to study in the late 2000s. She studied at the Sydney Film School (2007, Cert IV documentary film, Digital Filmmaking) and was awarded a Master of Environmental Management (2010, with a thesis on the social uses and functions of public swimming pools), and a Master of Contemporary Art (2012, with a video piece Loops and Lines). Both degrees are from the University of Tasmania. In 2019 she was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree from Victoria University.

In the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Gould carried the Olympic Torch at the stadium, as one of the runners for the final segment, before the lighting of the Olympic Flame.

In 1999, Gould published her autobiography Tumble Turns: An Autobiography.

In August 2018, it was revealed that Gould would be participating in Australian Survivor: Champions vs. Contenders and would be a part of the Champions tribe. On 9 October 2018, Gould was crowned the winner of Australian Survivor: Champions vs. Contenders in a 5–4 vote against criminal barrister Sharn Coombes. With this win, Gould became the oldest person to ever win any international series of Survivor. She later returned for Australian Survivor: All Stars, but was voted out first, finishing in 24th place.

In October 2025, Gould was announced as a contestant for the forthcoming third season of Network 10's The Traitors Australia.

Gould spent most of the years after ending competitive swimming out of the public eye. She married Neil Innes at 18, became a Christian, and lived on a working farm near Margaret River in Western Australia's South West. She farmed and taught horseriding and surfing, making very few public appearances. She has four children and eight grandchildren. Her marriage to Innes ended after 22 years, coinciding with a return to public life, and she married Milton Nelms in 2007. On 10 October 2023, Gould was one of 25 Australians of the Year who signed an open letter supporting the Yes vote in the Indigenous Voice referendum. The open letter was initiated by psychiatrist Patrick McGorry.

Shane Gould is recorded as swimmer, reality television participant, farmer and photographer.