Making Waves: My Journey to Winning Olympic Gold and Defeating the East German Doping Program - Hardcover

Shirley Babashoff is an American Olympic champion swimmer. In her extraordinary career, she set six world records and thirty-seven national records and earned a total of eight individual Olympic medals. She won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay in both the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, and four silver medals in the 4 x 100 meter medley relay and the 200-meter, 400-meter and 800-meter freestyle. She also won the 1975 world championship in both the 200-meter and 400-meter freestyle. Prior to the 1990s, she was the most successful U.S. female Olympian and, in her prime, was widely considered to be the greatest female swimmer on the planet. Babashoff is perhaps best remembered for swimming the anchor leg on the gold-medal winning 4×100-meter freestyle relay team in its victory over the steroid-plagued 1976 East German women, in what is widely acknowledged to be the single greatest race in the history of women's swimming. She was inducted to the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an "Honor Swimmer" in 1982. Babashoff lives in Fountain Valley, California, where she has been a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service for nearly thirty years.
Chris Epting is the author of 25 travel/history books, including James Dean Died Here, Roadside Baseball, andLed Zeppelin Crashed Here. He is also an award-winning travel writer and has contributed articles for such publications as theLos Angeles Times, Westways, and Travel + Lesiure magazine, and writes a weekly newspaper column for the Huntington Beach Independent. Originally from New York, Chris now lives in Huntington Beach, California with his wife and their two children.
Donna de Varona is an American Olympic swimmer who set eighteen world records and won multiple gold medals during her career. In 1964, the Associated Press and United Press International voted de Varona the Most Outstanding Woman Athlete in the World.” After retiring from swimming, de Varona became a sports broadcaster. At the age of 17, she appeared on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, becoming the youngest and one of the first women sportscasters for a national network. Her groundbreaking career has earned her an Emmy, two Gracies, and the opportunity to cover seventeen winter and summer Olympic games. She was inducted to the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an "Honor Swimmer" in 1969.

Making Waves is a stunningly honest look at the life and career of an elite Olympic athlete. Shirley Babashoff has always been an inspiration to me and countless others, and certainly belongs on top of the Mount Olympus of history’s greatest swimmers. Combine that with someone who stood up for what she believed was the truth and you have a true champion. Thank you, Shirley.” Janet Evans, five-time medalist at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics

In 1976, Olympic swimmer Shirley Babashoff had the ability to equal Mark Spitz’s legendary seven gold medals, had she been competing on an even playing field. Sadly, the competition was not fair and the media chose to ignore the truth, and Shirley’s inability to conceal her disappointment made her the biggest victim of those Games. In Making Waves, she gets to balance those scales with a poignant and revealing memoir. Shirley deserves this hearing and, through her insights and observations, you’ll learn more about this remarkable heroine than has ever been revealed before.” John Naber, five-time medalist at the 1976 Olympics

She should have been celebrated and honored, a role model for young girls and women everywhere. Maybe now Shirley Babashoff will be recognized for what she has been all along an American hero. In Making Waves, she speaks her truth, and though much of it is tragic and painful, she speaks it anyway. This is a gutsy book about a gutsy woman.” Mary Carillo, sportscaster

In hindsight, the coaches should have been the ones speaking out, but it was considered unsportsmanlike.’ Shirley paid the price for having the courage to tell the truth. . . . She’ll be remembered as the victim of cheating who never got the timely recognition that she deserved. I believe the records should be adjusted, as there is definitive proof of systematic East German cheating.” Mark Schubert, Babashoff’s legendary coach and former head coach and general manager of USA Swimming’s national team

Shirley Babashoff was visibly robbed of Olympic gold medals in 1976 and publicly humiliated in the media. She was the first athlete to accuse the East Germans of doping, but the world was not ready listen. Forty years later, Chris Epting finally tells the truth for the world to hear.” Brent Rutemiller, publisher of Swimming World

Shirley Babashoff was our star going into those Games, possibly the greatest female American swimmer ever. . . . She was as competitive, talented, and relentless an athlete as America has ever produced. She received one gold medal (a relay), five silvers, a thousand taunts and insults, and many death threats.” Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle

Shirley should have the gold medals she’s one of America’s greatest athletes ever and she had a lot of guts. Even today, athletes won’t speak up for fear of being called a sore loser, but that didn’t stop Shirley.’’ Jill Sterkel, part of the storied 1976 relay team that defeated the East Germans, now coordinator of athletics at the University of Texas

I totally applaud what Shirley Babashoff did. It was the right thing at the right time, and looking back, it had a tremendous effect.” John Carlos, U.S. sprinter who along with Tommie Smith raised a black-power salute on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City

"In light of the recent Russian doping scandal, Babashoff, a former Olympic medal winning swimmer, reveals in her timely memoir how the East German government turned their female swimmers into elite athletes with an experimental drug program. Her narrative deftly recounts her humble California beginnings, with her strict parents pushing her to triumph in a series of amateur meets and Olympic trials. Babashoff, assisted by veteran writer Epting, covers some painful terrain about her father molesting her for years, a crime he was eventually arrested for after similarly assaulting several neighborhood girls. Once the acclaimed swimmer gets on the big Olympic stage in 1972 and 1976, she witnesses the horror of the Munich massacre, the glory of gold medal winner Mark Spitz, and the evolution of the muscular East German female swimmers, who were groomed in the lab to smash world records. It’s like swimming against aliens,” Babashoff tells skeptical reporters, who doubt that the women’s new Charles Atlas bodies are the result of doping. Unforgettable and brave, Babashoff’s whistle-blowing memoir poses a host of disturbing questions about Olympic regulations, performance-enhancing drugs, anti-doping agencies, media arrogance, winning cleanly, and life after competition." Publishers Weekly