Cullen Jones Biography
Cullen Jones (Cullen Andrew Jones) is an American competition swimmer and Olympic gold medalist who specializes in freestyle sprint events. As part of the American team, he holds the world record in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay (long course).
At the 2012 Summer Olympics, he won silver medals in the 4 x 100-meter freestyle relay and the 50-meter freestyle, as well as the gold in the 4 x 100-meter medley.
Cullen Jones Age
Cullen Jones was born on February 29, 1984, in New York City the United States. He is 35 years old as of 2019.
Cullen Jones Net worth
Cullen Jones is an American competition swimmer who has an estimated net worth of $ 6 million dollars as of 2019.
Cullen Jones Education
Cullen Jones graduated from Saint Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark in 2002, and he then joined North Carolina State University where he studied English and swam for the NC State Wolfpack swimming and diving team in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) competition from 2003 to 2006. He graduated from Saint Benedict’s Preparatory School.
Cullen Jones Swimming career
Cullen Jones learned to swim after he was rescued from a near-drowning at a splash-down pool at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Pennsylvania when he was five years old.
Cullen Jones became an age-group swimmer at Metro Express, a club team at the Jewish Community Center in West Orange, New Jersey under head coach Ed Nessel.
Jones later switched teams to the Jersey Gators Swim Club in Cranford. While there, he swam for coach Glenn Cassidy and set numerous Essex County swimming records.
Cullen Jones turned into his profession of swimming in the summer of 2006, after signing with Nike and burst onto the scene shortly after at the 2006 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships where he set a meet record in the 50-meter freestyle with a time of 21.84 seconds.
He also swam a leg (split of 47.96) in the world record-breaking 4×100-meter freestyle relay along with Michael Phelps, Neil Walker, and Jason Lezak. In 2007, he also won a gold medal in 4×100-meter freestyle relay with the same teammates in the 2007 World Aquatics Championships.
Cullen Jones is the first African-American to hold a world record (4×100-meter freestyle relay) in swimming. In 2008 Cullen Jones had trials in the United States Olympic and the American record in the 50-meter freestyle with a time of 21.59.
The record was subsequently broken the next day by Garrett Weber-Gale. At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, he won a gold medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay in a world record time of 3:08.24 with Michael Phelps, Jason Lezak, and Garrett Weber-Gale.
In July 2009, he set the American record in the 50-meter freestyle at the U.S. National Championships in Indianapolis, Indiana.
At the 2012 United States Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, the qualifying meets for the 2012 Olympics, Jones made the Olympic team for the second time by finishing first in the 50-meter freestyle and second in the 100-meter freestyle, which subsequently qualified him for the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.
Cullen Jones won silver medals in the 50-meter freestyle and the 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
Cullen Jones earned a gold medal in the 4×100-meter medley relay after swimming the freestyle leg in the preliminaries. He also competed in the 100-meter freestyle but did not qualify for the event finals.
Cullen Jones Foundation
Cullen Jones supports the USA Swimming Foundation which Makes a Splash initiative rolls into its second decade, the national learn-to-swim landscape has evolved. In the process of amassing more than 850 partners across all 50 states thus providing a lifesaving skill to more than four million children, one constant has been Cullen Jones.
Jones is best known as a four-time Olympic medalist and the first African American male swimmer to capture a world record. But his contributions to the sport extend far beyond athletic achievement. The New Jersey native has been a USA Swimming Foundation ambassador since 2007.
During that time he’s made Make a Splash Tour stops in dozens of cities, leading clinics and talking directly with families about the importance of basic water safety. Embracing this role was a natural fit for Jones.
As a five-year-old, he nearly drowned in the landing pool of a water park ride. Subsequent swim lessons revealed untapped talent and uncommon mental toughness, and he soon joined his first club: Newark Swim Team, which boasted a racial composition rarely seen on pool decks in the 1990s.
“It was a minority team for the most part,” says Jones. “And at that time we were the only culturally diverse group going to swim meets. But I think a lot of the strength that I have come from being on a team of people who kind of looked like me, and we looked out for each other.”
Cullen Jones worked on his way up in the swimming ladder, that he explored in other interests. He spent hours lost in comic books, and through his father, a lifelong early-adopter “tech geek”, developed a love of gadgets and technology.
At age 11, under his dad’s watchful eye, Cullen built his first computer. Simultaneously, however, a path pointing toward elite status as a world-class swimmer was unfolding before him.
At age 15, Cullen Jones joined a new team this one at a Jewish Community Center where, in contrast to the culturally diverse makeup of his first club, he was the only black swimmer.
“I did have both experiences,” says Jones. “And I had a great experience at the JCC. I loved that team, I loved my coach and my teammates.” Even so, as he progressed, racially charged comments became more prevalent and not only from those who felt threatened by his abilities.
The attitudes of his own black and Latin friends ranged from puzzled to disapproving. “I was getting it from every direction, but it really didn’t matter because I loved what I was doing.”
Cullen Jones persisted. Following a storied college career at North Carolina State, Jones broke out in a big way at the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships, setting a meet record in the 50-meter freestyle and a world record as part of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.
He followed that with gold medals at the 2007 and 2009 World Aquatics Championships and the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. He won another gold and two silvers at the London Olympics in 2012.
In the midst of this ascent, Jones was approached by the USA Swimming Foundation about their nascent learn-to-swim initiative.
Despite having narrowly escaped tragedy as a boy, he, like most of the country, had no idea how deep and wide the water safety crisis extended: Drowning had quietly become the leading cause of accidental death for children under the age of four, and the second leading cause for children under 14.
“When the Foundation put these stats in front of me, it blew my mind,” says Jones. He saw in those figures the friends and family back in New Jersey who openly rejected learning to swim. “They’re a part of this number that I’m reading on a piece of paper.
I’m saying to myself, ‘This is the problem, this is what we’re trying to fix.’ And I related to it because I almost drowned. I was almost a number on this page.” In his role as USA Swimming Foundation Ambassador, Jones began visiting cities big and small as part of the Make a Splash Tour.
When six teenagers drowned in a tragic accident in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 2010, the cause took on greater significance. It was an especially heartbreaking story, as one after another lost their lives trying to save each other.
Later that year, the USA Swimming Foundation brought a Tour stop to Shreveport, where the community remained in a fog of devastation and disbelief. Rather than embracing the idea of water safety, many families retreated into a generations-old fear of the water. Only six kids showed up to the swim clinic, and they were terrified.
Every time Jones invited them to the edge of the pool, they backed into the waiting arms of their parents. A long stretch of prodding and encouragement eventually got all six in the water, but the experience crystallized the challenges and complexities that lie ahead.
“I got out of the pool,” says Jones, “I went into the bathroom, and I just started crying. I thought, ‘I get it. This is what I need to be doing.’ And I’ve been doing it ever since.” That work includes not only the Make a Splash Tour but advocating policy changes at the highest levels of government.
He’s made trips to Capitol Hill to educate and motivate lawmakers, and he’s spoken to millions of parents across wide-ranging traditional and social media platforms. Cullen Jones’s life remains a tapestry of varied pursuits and interests he was married this summer, is on track to finish his college degree next spring and has set his eyes on a career path in brand management, fashion, or both.
Nevertheless, Make a Splash remains an inextricable part of his life, and with a decade of work on its behalf, he sees plenty of reason for optimism. “There are so many issues out there with no solution,” Jones says. “But we have a solution for this.
It’s swim lessons. We’ve had four million kids learn how to swim, so we know what we’re doing. It’s working. The numbers are coming down. We just need to keep pushing.”