Cullen Jones

CTL-E-6897 · Person · other · contemporary

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07769 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6897.

Cullen Andrew Jones (born February 29, 1984, in the Bronx, New York, and raised in Irvington, New Jersey) is an American freestyle sprint swimmer who learned to swim only after being rescued from a near-drowning at a water park at age five. He swam for North Carolina State University, where he was an English major and won an NCAA title as a senior. USA Swimming credits Jones as the first African American to set a world record in long-course meters, as a member of the United States 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships; he won Olympic gold in the same relay at Beijing 2008 in a world-record 3:08.24 alongside Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale and Jason Lezak. At London 2012 he added gold in the 4×100-meter medley relay and silver medals in the 50-meter freestyle and the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, for four Olympic medals in all. After competition he became a prominent water-safety advocate through the USA Swimming Foundation's Make A Splash program, teaching children — disproportionately Black and Latino children — to swim.

The record

• Also known as: Cullen Andrew Jones

Notes

Sports Encyclopedia roster CTL-SPE-0184. Firsts disposition: ASSERTED — first African American to hold or share a world record in swimming. Two-source basis: USA Swimming (authoritative federation source; dates the first long-course world record to the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships relay) and Novant Health (independent; 'first African American to capture a world record in swimming'). The description follows USA Swimming's dating and treats the 2008 Olympic relay as the best-known instance, rather than dating the first solely to 2008. Curator's Judgment (DRAFT): Jones's record matters on two levels — the sprint and relay results themselves, and a second career spent attacking the drowning statistics that nearly claimed him at five. Few Olympic champions have converted a childhood trauma into a public-health mission this directly. Photo: CLEARED — Cullen Jones.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Relationships

• The Bronx, New York — from
  Jones was born in the Bronx, New York City, and raised in Irvington, New Jersey (USA Swimming; Novant Health).

Sources

• USA Swimming, 'From Nearly Drowning to Gold Medals and a Lot in Between' (2020) — Jones, underwater for nearly 30 seconds in a near-drowning at age five, became the first African American to set a world record in long course meters on America's 400 freestyle relay at the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships, swam third on the world-record 2008 Olympic relay, and won gold and two silver medals in 2012 — https://www.usaswimming.org/news/2020/02/27/from-nearly-drowning-to-gold-medals-and-a-lot-in-between (primary source · build store)
• Team USA, 'Cullen Jones' — hometown Irvington, NJ; education North Carolina State University; two-time Olympian and four-time Olympic medalist (2 gold, 2 silver): Beijing 2008 gold, 4x100m freestyle relay; London 2012 gold, 4x100m medley relay, and silver in the 50m freestyle and 4x100m freestyle relay — https://www.teamusa.com/profiles/cullen-jones (primary source · build store)
• Novant Health, 'How Cullen Jones turned a near-death experience into Olympic gold and a lifetime of community advocacy' — four-time Olympic medalist and the first African American to capture a world record in swimming; 2008 relay gold held the world record for 11 years; gold and two silvers at London 2012; retired, teaching swimming and working in community advocacy — https://supportnovanthealth.org/how-cullen-jones-turned-a-near-death-experience-into-olympic-gold-and-a-lifetime-of-community-advocacy-2/ (build store)

More person records

• Lewis Hamilton
• Lewis Howard Latimer
• Liam Charles
• Liani Greaves
• Lidell Townsell
• Lil Baby

Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-6897 · Combined Graph record U-07769 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

Cite this record

Citation guidance for teachers, journalists, and funders: How to Cite Us.

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.