Richard Burns to Join 2026 ISHOF Class, a Rare Honor for Masters Swimmers

Growing up in suburban Chicago in the 1950s and early ’60s, Richard Burns swam a lot. In 1957, he followed his best friend to tryouts at New Trier High School, and he “just managed to make the team,” he says.

As a member of the highly regarded New Trier swim team, Burns enjoyed the competition and camaraderie, but he wasn’t a headliner.

That role was filled by other swimmers, including Dale Kiefer (son of Olympian Adolph), who went on to become an All-American breaststroker at Yale; Dave Lyons, who earned a gold medal at the 1963 Pam-American Games and swam at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo; and Fred Schmidt, who won gold and bronze medals in Tokyo in ’64.

Next to those contemporaries, Burns was something of an also-ran, ranking as the team’s fourth backstroker who nevertheless notched an All-American ranking that caught the attention of Indiana University’s legendary swimming coach, James “Doc” Counsilman. Counsilman offered Burns a place on the team, where Burns continued to swim and thrive, somewhere in the middle of the pack.

After college, Burns assumed his swimming career was over. So for some 10 years, he focused on running a marketing communications company. He didn’t think much about swimming until he was invited to participate in a Masters meet in 1975.

“The lure of the pool was compelling,” he says, so even though he hadn’t swum a competitive stroke in more than 10 years, he borrowed a suit and deck-entered the meet. That’s all it took. The now-82-year-old immediately joined Tamalpais Aquatic Masters in the San Francisco Bay area.

Getting back in shape wasn’t easy, but by 1980, Burns had established himself as a leader in this field, swimming fast, felling records, and unknowingly setting the pace for generations of Masters swimmers to come.

Over the course of his 51-year history with U.S. Masters Swimming, Burns has set 97 AQUA Masters world records and 157 USMS individual records. He’s been named to Swimming World magazine’s Masters Swimmer of the Year list five times, and in 2010, he was inducted into the Masters International Swimming Hall of Fame, a prestigious honor reserved only for the fastest, most superlative, and most enduring of Masters swimmers.

But that honor came 16 years ago, and in the interim, Burns has continued to plow ahead in new age groups. Consistently and methodically, he’s created a wake that other swimmers can only hope to keep up with as he swam toward his latest accolade: induction into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, which will take place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in May.

To fully understand the significance of this honor, a key point of distinction needs to be made. The International Swimming Hall of Fame is different from the Masters International Swimming Hall of Fame. The two organizations are connected, but MISHOF split off from ISHOF in 2003.

Prior to creating a separate MISHOF, 11 Masters swimmers had been inducted into the Masters category of ISHOF. But with the creation of MISHOF, more Masters swimmers began receiving hall of fame honors via that new organization and Masters swimmers would only be induced to ISHOF for exceptional reasons.

This distinction is not meant to dilute the prestige of being inducted into MISHOF, which is itself a precious and coveted honor. It just means that since 2003, gaining entry to ISHOF has become a much rarer event reserved for only the best Masters swimmers in the world.

Since then, only four Masters swimmers have been inducted:

• Laura Val (USA) in 2004
• Jane Asher (Great Britain) in 2005
• Yoshiko Osaki (Japan) in 2005
• Karlyn Pipes (USA) in 2015

In 2026, 11 years after the last Masters swimmer was inducted, Burns will become the first male Masters swimmer to be inducted to ISHOF since MISHOF was split off. It’s a lot to take in.

Receiving this honor as he’s surpassed 50 years in Masters Swimming is “somewhat overwhelming,” Burns says. “Even though I’ve been doing this for a long time, in my early swimming days, I wasn’t a superstar. I did not swim at the front of the pack,” he says with characteristic humility.

But his continual diligence has paid off.

“Over the years, I discovered what racing was really about,” he says. “Even though I swam for two of the most storied swimming programs in the history of swimming and two of arguably the best coaches ever in high school and college swimming, I was always back in the pack.”

Until now, when Burns is so far ahead of his peers.

As a teenager, Burns never imagined then that he might still be competing now, and being considered among the most elite of swimmers was something that never crossed his mind. But getting here has been a joy manifested through near-daily swims, lots of meets, and the steadfast support of folks around him.

Burns credits Val, 74, a longtime teammate on Tamalpais Aquatic Masters, with being his “swim muse” who has inspired him to continue training and competing.

“Having a partner to swim with and go to meets together, we’re a little team and I think we just inspire each other,” Burns says.

Val adds, “We’re each other’s cheerleaders. And we’ve competed against each other. Our times were very close together for many, many years, and that’s fun to do.”

In other meets, they’ve competed head-to-head in the same heat, which gives them both a chance to test their mettle against the person whose swimming-opinion means the most. That adoring yet competitive rivalry has sustained the pair for a long time.

Burns also gives ample credit to his long-time Masters coach, Marie McSweeney, who recently celebrated 50 years coaching Tamalpais Aquatic Masters. Burns has been swimming with McSweeney since 1975 and says he’s “learned things from her that I never learned from Counsilman. Her technique, her treatment, and the whole demeanor she brings to Masters swimming is perfect for me and made me want to keep going,” he says. “I call her a Master Masters coach.”

In addition to a lengthy and highly successful Masters career in the pool, Burns has also been a longtime contributor to USMS’s volunteer efforts.

He attended his first USMS Convention and National Meeting in 1986 and has remained heavily involved at the local, LMSC, and national level in a variety of capacities ever since. He’s earned a number of accolades for that lengthy service, including a 1998 USMS Dorothy Donnelly Service Award and the USMS June Krauser Communications Award in 2015.

Lest you think Burns is planning to hang up his goggles and rest on his hard-earned and well-deserved laurels, don’t worry. We’ll likely be hearing lots more from this consummate swimmer in the future because he’s going to take his own advice.

“If I had a message for everybody who’s a Masters swimmer, it’s to just keep doing it,” he says. “It’s so easy to stop, and when you stop, it’s hard to get started again.

“We used to joke about wanting to get to the point in our lives where we could train by just staying alive to the next meet. I’m in the middle of my age group, so I’ve got two more years before I turn 85. But now, I’m looking at those records and thinking about what I need to maintain or achieve to keep the steak going. That’s a big motivator.”