Olympic swimming gold medallist Kevin Berry has passed away after a long illness. He was 61.

Berry was one of the youngest ever swimmers to represent Australia at the Olympics making his first team as a 15 year old at the Rome Olympics in 1960.

“He was the baby of the Team” said fellow swimming great John Devitt.

Berry finished 6th in the men’s 200 metres butterfly in Rome but four years later in Tokyo he achieved his Olympic dream to win gold in his pet event the “200 fly”.

“It was only after I received the gold medal on the dais that it sank in that I was an Olympic champion. I can’t put into words to describe how I felt” he said later.

He won his second Olympic medal in 1964, a bronze, in the 4x100 medley relay.

“Kevin was a great Olympian and a gold medallist and took his discipline, butterfly, to a new level during the 60’s. He was passionate about the sport and made a great contribution through the media, administration and advice to young swimmers on the way up” Devitt said.

Berry was a triple Commonwealth Games gold medallist in Perth 1962, the holder of 12 individual world records between 1961 and 1968 and was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1980.

Journalist Ian Heads covered swimming for The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs when Berry was at his peak in the pool.

"Kevin was a great Olympian and the world's champion butterfly swimmer of his generation. His Tokyo gold medal triumph was the product of a supreme talent matched with a single-minded application to training that still stands as an inspiring model for swimmers through to the present day.

"His Games' experiences of 1960 and 1964 ignited in him an Olympic passion of rare intensity and in all the years that followed, he remained an untiring worker for the Olympic movement, repaying many times over the opportunity given to him as a teenager'' Heads said today.

Berry was one of seven children from a devout Catholic family from the Sydney suburb of Marrickville. At the Rome Games he met Pope John XX111 and during a private audience offered to teach him to swim. Berry said his faith helped him cope with the pressure of the Games.

“There’s a tremendous amount of pressure at Olympic Games level, but my faith allowed me to cope and gave me an edge over my opponents” he said.

After swimming, Berry became a photographer and pictorial editor with the Sydney Morning Herald and later the Head of Sport for ABC television.

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