lit a candle 13d ago64. That's the age my uncle was when we lost him, different story probably but it still knocks the wind out of you reading that number again. Didn't know her swimming, just know LA 84 bronze is nothing to sneeze at.
Their story
Michelle Robyn Pearson was an Australian swimmer who represented her country at two Olympic Games and was one of the most versatile medley and freestyle swimmers of her generation in the 1980s. She died on 11 October 2026 at the age of 64. Pearson first appeared on the international stage…
Michelle Robyn Pearson was an Australian swimmer who represented her country at two Olympic Games and was one of the most versatile medley and freestyle swimmers of her generation in the 1980s. She died on 11 October 2026 at the age of 64.
Pearson first appeared on the international stage at the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada, as a teenager, reaching the finals of both individual medley events. She went on to make her Olympic debut at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, swimming in the 100 metre freestyle and the 4x100 metre freestyle relay. In 1981 she became one of the first athletes to join the newly founded Australian Institute of Sport, where she trained for several years and was named the Institute's Athlete of the Year in 1985.
Her finest hour came at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where she reached four individual and relay finals, a reflection of her unusual range across both medley and freestyle events. She won the bronze medal in the 200 metre individual medley, finishing behind the American pair of Tracy Caulkins and Nancy Hogshead and narrowly ahead of her training rival and compatriot Lisa Curry. She also came within a tenth of a second of a second medal in the 200 metre freestyle, and swam in the 100 metre freestyle and the 4x100 metre freestyle relay finals. The following year she added five medals at the 1985 Summer Universiade in Kobe, Japan, and closed out her international career with a relay gold at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
Pearson mattered to Australian swimming as part of a golden generation of 1980s swimmers, alongside figures such as Lisa Curry, who helped establish the Australian Institute of Sport as a serious pipeline for Olympic talent in the years after its founding. Her Los Angeles bronze medal remains her best known achievement and the reason her name endures in the record books of Australian Olympic swimming.
News of Pearson's death on 11 October 2026 has not yet been accompanied by a public statement on the cause of death, and no details about where she died have been made public. This page will be updated as verified information becomes available.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and the sources cited on this page; death reported by Facebook.
same age as my dad too, it's a strange one to see over and over