Hideko Maehata

Hideko Maehata was a Japanese breaststroke swimmer and the first Japanese woman to earn a gold medal in the Olympics.

Maehata was born in Hashimoto, Wakayama, as the daughter of a tofu producer and as a child learned to swim in the Kinokawa River. In the fifth grade of elementary school, she set an unofficial youth record for the 50meter breaststroke. She went on to win numerous competitions, and was sponsored to attend a womens boarding school in Nagoya which specialized in swimming, but the sudden death of her parents in 1931 forced her return home. Yet she was selected for the Japanese Olympic swimming team for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and won the silver medal in the 200 m breaststroke event. She lost to Clare Dennis a mere 0.1 of a second.

Source: Wikipedia